; 



, ■ 



; : : , . :::..: 





BY THE SAME AUfHOR. 



THE CONSOLATIONS OF SCIENCE; Or 

Contributions from Nature to the Hope of Immortality, and 
Kindred Themes. Introduction by H. W. Thomas, D.D. , 
Pastor of the People's Church, Chicago, Illinois* 
This is an exhaustive work on the evidences oT Immortality 

from the standpoint of Science, and has received very high 

commendations from many of the best minds of America and 

England. Below are a few examples : 
" I have for many years steadfastly held, in public 

and in private, the same general conclusions as those 

you have so forcibly sustained."— Thomas Hill, P. P. 

LL.D., Ex.-Pres't Harvard. 
•'Masterly in its criticisms." — Noah Porter, D, P. 

LL. P. , Pres't Yale College. 

" Whilelit cannot fail to be a welcome instructor to 

all, it will possess eepecial value to those who are seek 

ing light for the guidance of others. "—-4. A. Miner, 

P.P., LL.P., Ex.-Pres't Tufts College. 

" Will accomplish much toward a union of earth 
and heaven." — Prof. Pavirt Swing. 

"The aim of the volume is praiseworthy, and its 
execution most admirable. " — Geo. C. Lorime , D. D. 

"The argument is ingenious, fair and conclusive.' ■ 
— The Examiner (New York . ) 

" Something of awe must come from reading such a 
hook as this. "—The Christian Register (Boston). 

Among the interesting topics that are discussed at lhe con- 
clusion, are: 

"Approximate Analysis of Real Ufe in lhe Lund Immortal.— 
Changes that are Possible; that are Probable; that are Im- 
probable; (hat arc Impossible.— Bodily Slate and Advantages. 
—Death and Old Age Abolished.— Palpable Surroundings.— 
Recognitions, Reunions and Companionships. — Education an 
Worship." 

Contains 445 pages, including a copious Index. 
PKICE, *3.00. 



PROPHECY and PROPHETS: 



The Laws of Inspiration and Their 
Phenomena. 



JACOB STRATJB, A. M., 

Authob op " The Consolations of Science," etc., 
etc. 



There is a Spirit in Man, and the Inspiration of the Almighty 
ttiveth them understanding."— Bible. 



CHICAGO : 
S. W. STRAUB & CO., 

1888- 







Copyrighted, 1887, 

By JACOB 8THAUB, 

All rights reserved. 



CHICAGO: 
GEO. DANIELS, Printer, 

79 & 81 RANDOLPH ST. 



DEDICATION. 



TO THE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS BEFORE THE PUBLIC ASSEM- 
BLIES AND BEFORE THE PRrVATE CLASSES, TO THE STU- 
DENTS EVERYWHERE OF RELIGION AND NATURE, AND 
TO HIS TWO YOUNG DAUGHTERS, GERTIE AND 
CARRIE, WHO WERE HIS FREQUENT COMPANIONS 
IN THE LIBRARY WHEN IT WAS BEING PRE- 
PARED, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE. 



IT is growing more widely evident and apprecia- 
ted that the trend of educated Christian thought 
is toward the theory that in nature there must he a 
basis for revelation, in the accepted sense of the 
term ; and that, indeed, what is, is necessarily also 
in some sense natural. It is also sufficiently plain 
that with this basis verified beyond a reasonable 
doubt, many efficient people of honest unbelief 
would presently be reclaimed to faith. It is further 
confidently believed that generally the Bible would 
be more forcefully and successfully preached and 
taught when having well in hand the facts which in 
nature are its allies. On the other hand, conceding 
the want of such alliances were to add largely to the 
difficulties in the way of belief. 

With many of the best minds, for entirely ade- 
quate reasons, the Bible is wholly trustworthy, and 
thus may accomplish its full mission to them with- 
out these corroborations. With others it is neces- 
sarily otherwise, who are seeing in nature the sum 
of all verities and the only basis of real authority. 

Out of these considerations this volume was 

(5) 



VI PREFACE. 

written ; and it is confidently believed that a careful 
reading of it will lead to the discovery of the basis 
in nature for prophecy and inspiration — where they 
may be seen to be as natural, in a given domain of 
nature, as the plant is natural in the domain to which 
it belongs, and "that their functions are of natural 
requirement, through their media being supplied 
the authority that must govern where the highest 
ends of life are to be attained. 

It is, however, written in pure deference to 
nature and science, with no recourse to revelation 
for authority, only for corroborative facts, and in the 
same way that such fact's were gathered from the 
profane sources. It was written with no particular 
creed in mind — conserving but the one purpose — to 
contribute light to the identification of revelation 
with nature, to the end that its salutary authority 
may be more widely received. It is realized, too, 
that it is but the beginning of what will be more 
fully elaborated in the future upon the same line. 
At every step was the embarrassing realization that 
all that could be admitted to be said must not over- 
reach the limits of a small book. This must be the 
answer where, in perhaps many places, the reader 
will ask, Why was not more said here, in this direc- 
tion? 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

An Age of Science makes Demands for Science 9 

CHAPTER H. 

The General Impression of the Acceptance of 
Natural Facts as the Basis of Truth. — 
Religious Claims in the Presence of the 
Impression. — The Relations of Prophecy 
with Religion ----- 30 

CHAPTER III. 

Reasons why Prophecy has not Appeared Promi- 
nently as a Subject of Science and Phi- 
losophy. — Prophecy a Legitimate Subject 
for Science - - - . - 44 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Argument for Prophecy. — The Preliminary 

Conditions Stated .... 56 

CHAPTER V. 

Perceiving the Phenomena of the Future - 68 

CHAPTER VI. 
Knowledge of Future Events. — Phophecy a Com- 
munication of the Ends Rather than of the 
Means of Discovery. — How Communicated 74 

(7) 



VIII CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

correspondence between extremes of mlnd.— 

Mode of the Higher with the Lower - 84 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Intuition and Inspiration. — Their Relation - 94 

CHAPTER IX. 

Some Reasons why Prophetic Incidents are so 
Rarely met with in Profane History. — 
Principles to be Observed in Determining 
Prophetic Events. — Phases of the Phe- 
nomena ...... 105 

CHAPTER X. 
Prophecy in Profane History - • 123 

CHAPTER XL 

The Phenomena in Sacred History. — The Term 
Prophecy in the Bible not Restricted to 
Prediction. — Characteristics of Prophets 146 

CHAPTER XII. 

History a Science. — Fossil Literature. — Onto- 

logical Outlook. — Concluding Remarks - 166 



PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 



CHAPTER I. 

AN AGE OF SCIENCE MAKES DEMANDS FOB 
SCIENCE.-REQUIRED CHANGE IN METHODS 
FOR THE NEW CONDITIONS. 

With new arrivals of principles, incident 
to enlarged acquaintance with facts, comes 
the necessity of revision and extension 
of methods in the development of life. 
The past is continually reappearing in 
the present, but never fully represents 
the present. And however efficiently it 
may have provided for itself in its day in 
matters of conduct for mankind, in the 
present are new conditions for which the 
present must make the provisions. Even 
the facts of the past, with the better light 
of the present upon them, may stand in 
the same need with new facts, and also 

(9) 



IO PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

require utilizing by the light of the 
present. 

With the improved light which usually 
characterizes a present, old facts are 
vested with new and higher significance, 
and are enabled to enter upon correspond- 
ingly higher orders of service and more 
directly upon the achievement of their 
appointed ends. By this the past achieve- 
ments are not discontinued, nor is their 
influence upon the economy of life les- 
sened. It were ingratitude to the past, 
and defeating to its purposes, looking 
as it did with less perfect vision only 
towards the final accomplishment of their 
true interpretation and their full benefi- 
cence, to continue the facts bequeathed 
by it without correcting the errors in 
respect to them, which, until present 
advantages, could not be revealed. And, 
hence, that is not a conservative spirit 
which prompts the retention of interpre- 
tations only because they are the work 



THE SUPERIOR PRESENT. II 

of the past, or seeks to deflect the light 
which might disclose an error in them. 

The finite mind may not occupy a posi- 
tion where the judgment will be alto- 
gether faultless, and the present is as 
truly liable to error as the past; yet 
because the world in its progress from 
past to present is at the later period more 
commonly less in error, while the one 
holding to the new interpretation is liable 
to be the mistaken one, it is more prob- 
ably the one who holds the old. And 
while the new position is not altogether 
safe as being the right way, neither is the 
old ; and by the facts referred to, showing 
that the major probability of being right 
is with the new, the interests of human- 
ity might, as a rule, with less misgiving, 
be confided to the new. 

While, then, the thoughtful may be 
expected to form conclusions only on the 
basis of properly examined facts, there 
may be the gratifying realization that the 



12 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

incoming theory, formed under wider 
ranges of vision, is likely to be nearer the 
truth in the matter to which it pertains 
than is the one of the older adoption, and 
to better conserve the good ends contem- 
plated in human existence. 

CHANGE IN MEANS OVER THE CONDUCT 
OF LIFE. 

Chief among the means in the devel- 
opment of life is a salutary determining 
power over conduct. Obedience to help- 
ful rules was once procurable with less 
need of the processes of reason. With 
less capacity for reason there was, as a 
matter of course, also less desire for it, 
and less to be accomplished upon the 
people by its employment. Meantime, 
other agencies were more serviceable. 
From this it was, not because a ministry 
of reason was not present and willing to 
administer, but because reason was less 
availing, that the past was directed more 



RATIO OF PROGRESS. 1 3 

by the force of arbitrary dictation. 
Teachers were commonly believed more 
on account of extraordinary occult powers 
over surrounding nature which were seen 
attending them, or the martial or royal 
insignia which vested them, than because 
of the rational character of their instruc- 
tions. 

While mankind were still mainly on 
this level, there was in long ages but 
little difference between past and present, 
and few departures from customs, social, 
educational, or religious. With less of 
the distinctively human order of mind 
followed a stronger tendency to routine 
life, from which improvement or change 
in any direction was for centuries at a 
time so closely barred out as to leave to 
the chronicler little of consequence to 
relate but the stories of ever-present 
wars. And of this chief art and indus- 
try commonly the implements and the 
science at the going out of the century 



14 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

were the same as at the coming in ; while 
of the interpretations of nature, society 
and religion, it could hardly be said that 
the advancement was as marked. 

However, from a mainly routine to a 
mainly devisive state of life involves an 
immense difference in attainment, requir- 
ing a corresponding expenditure of force 
by the parts enlarged. And so in those 
long periods in which superficially there 
was but little change, there was, after all, 
incessant growth. Strength was being 
acquired, and general increase in compass 
of the perceiving and realizing powers. 
The acquirements were for the most part 
merely potential — statical, to become 
aggressive when sufficiently massive. To 
this end progress has been made in vary- 
ing measures by most, possibly by all, 
branches of the race. 

By this may be explained why our 
negroes, who are only a few generations 
from the savage state, when in the same 



LATENT PROGRESS. 1 5 

schools and social environment will even 
now show an average accomplishment 
so nearly rivalling that of the average 
European. The same will apply to the 
Hindoos, the Japanese, and the China- 
men. The European ancestors as com- 
pared with those of the Jew were but 
lately barbarians and savages, and yet in 
average qualification for the great respon- 
sibilities of the English premiership, 
between Gladstone and D'Israeli little 
difference was seen. 

That few innovations of any character 
arose in those long periods in primitive 
history may well be regarded as fortun- 
ate, while the higher mentality was less 
capable to obviate or correct important 
errors. Under such a state it were far 
better that the disposition to conserve 
wisely appointed standards should more 
prevail, leaving less responsibility with a 
less competent reason. 



1 6 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

ADVENT OF THE REASONING ELEMENT. 

Now, however, the day is upon us when 
the reflective mind is much enlarged and 
rapidly gaining control. And with it 
comes more of the purpose to be devising 
and self-directing in the conduct of life. 
The first prominence of this order of 
mind, not reckoning a few sporadic 
instances of great and lasting distinction, 
but which were local and of the brief 
continuance of but a few generations at 
a time, in earlier ages, was the rise of 
scholasticism in the later middle centu- 
ries, throughout Europe and England, 
and which attained its height under 
Aquinas and Scotus. From the fact that 
it took the form of a general uprising at 
the centers of learning, then numerously 
established over the continent and 
England, that it was continuous over 
more than three centuries, and then 
underwent a change only in the data dis- 
cussed and not in the character of the 



AN ERA OF MIND. 1J 

thought employed, it must be regarded 
as au era in the history of the human 
mind. 

Assuming dogmas as of necessity facts, 
in place of the facts of nature, the same 
reasoning was applied upon them for a 
science which the physicist employs upon 
physical facts for a physical science. It 
was not only the element of reason, but 
much of it was of the purest order of 
reason which is known to us. Having 
continued through the schools, employed 
quite generally upon the same data, with 
here and there a venture toward a change 
of data, from dogma to nature, it was 
still the same order of mind as that 
which appeared later in such wonderful 
prominence and efficiency in the instances 
of Bacon and Descartes, the leaders of 
the reform which upon completion will 
have destroyed the arbitrary distinction 
between philosophy and science. 

Its application by them to the facts of 



l8 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

nature, — in physics, metaphysics and 
psychics, was its supreme opportunity. 
It could achieve no substantial advan- 
tages with merely dogmas for its facts. 
So long as dogmas themselves required, 
with thoughtful people, the verification 
which reason alone from verified facts 
could supply, its machinery was little 
better than spinning in mid-air. But 
adjusted to natural facts — the sphere to 
which its function assigns it — at once the 
world felt the thrill of a new life, and the 
wheels of revolution set forward. Till 
then observations of natural phenomena, 
instead of natural sciences, in the main 
resulted in nothing higher than empir- 
icisms. 

But the Novum Organum of Bacon 
was rather the crisis than the invention 
of the great idea of "experimental phil- 
osophy." Others had employed the same 
principle, in substance certainly, as far 
back as Roger Bacon; while even Aristo- 



THE NEW DATA. 1 9 

tie, vastly more remote, manifested a 
strong tendency toward it. Snch a vast 
mind, so extensively occnpied upon the 
system of nature, would in any age 
measurably note and embody that for the 
erection of a science reason must proceed 
from natural facts, or from facts verifiable 
therefrom, of whatever order of being. 

However, the time of the pronounced 
transfer of this supreme order of mind 
from the data of dogmas to the data of 
natural facts must be placed as late as Sir 
Francis Bacon and Descartes. Chiefly 
from the impetus derived from their 
world-wide influence over the learning of 
their times did the new departure derive 
its first general success. Beyond Newton 
and Laplace the principles of the schol- 
astics, save in theology, where the veri- 
fiable grounds were more remote, con- 
tinued but rarely. 

In making these observations no judg- 
ment is expressed as -to the probable 



20 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

truth of those dogmas ; it is alleged only 
that they were discontinued as data for 
deductions of reason, their own data com- 
ing to be required to be seen in the facts 
of nature or those deducible from nature. 

THE AGE OF NATURAL SCIENCE. 

There is, then, here a new era in view 
in the history of the reasoning element 
of mind. Reason given the facts of 
nature for the evolutions of its devising 
functions, dates the advent of true 
science. Our present is then not merely 
an epoch of reason, but of reason joined 
with nature, its proper objective rela- 
tion, — an epoch of the uncovering of 
verities to the understanding — the epoch 
of science! 

In cosmic history one epoch is not 
always separated from another by a sin- 
gle sharp line, but traces of one may 
be found entirely through and beyond 
another, and to the end of the series, 



the epoch permanent. 21 

while, in aggregate, one may little 
resemble another. So while the sub- 
stance of this epoch may be traced far 
back, even to the founding of the race, as 
an epoch, it differs radically from all the 
past. It is the culmination of the series, 
as well, and is here permanently. What 
are now seen to be its characteristics are 
destined to enlarge and be more prevail- 
ing. The essential peculiarity is the 
general disposition to verify everything 
from the facts of nature — its nature — in 
each case. 

In the present time, in this epoch, it is 
not so exclusively inquired, What is such 
an authority saying? or, What bearing 
has such a dogma upon the proposition ? 
but, as well, What are the natural facts 
pertaining thereto? Economic investiga- 
tions of nature have widely impressed 
community that for reliableness a propo- 
sition is required to be the voice of nature 
on that subject. And propositions con- 



22 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

tinuing current with no visible support 
from natural facts, tend by the force of 
this impression to be discredited and rele- 
gated to superstition or some other form 
of persistent delusion. 

It is noted, too, that phenomena are 
everywhere solvable by effective search 
of the natural laws underlying them. 
These laws, also, are regarded as final 
fixities, and always under the same con- 
ditions are of the same deportment and 
yield the same results. Hence, results 
being of the same fixity as the laws 
themselves, their attainment is the attain- 
ment of fixed realities. Still further, 
phenomena in no instance are based on a 
single law, but always are laws in com- 
bination, — are results in combination. 
And thus they are not only inviting to 
reason from the gratifications its versatile 
evolutions supply to the sense of happi- 
ness in the employment of laws in new 
combinations for new results, only for 



A GENERAL APPRECIATION. 23 

diversion, but as well for helpful eco- 
nomic results, for the sake of helpful 
devices to the economy of life. Out of 
this wide-extended impression concerning 
natural laws, has arisen the astonishing 
general activity in inventions character- 
izing this age of the world, and which 
seems to be but an earnest of what is to 
come. 

It is likewise a matter of general appre- 
ciation that over these facts conventions 
have no control to make or unmake, and 
hence can place no bar to progress. The 
mind, in its unending requirements for 
new and superior mental sceneries, their 
ever, in simple and complex character, 
crowding on its field of vision, affords not 
only a means of continued nourishment 
and immunity from ennui and decay, 
but of ceaselessly enlarging joys. It is 
nourished by this panorama of natural 
facts more than from one of dogma, how- 
ever capable of versatility the dogmas may 



24 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

be, by all the difference there is between 
a dinner of theory and one of substance. 
The mental digestion as inexorabl}- 
requires substance as does the physical. 
The continued necessity of enlarged con- 
veniences, temporally and spiritually, to 
facilitate life in its attainment of proper 
ends, finds in the provisions here supplied 
for the means of continual improvement 
in devices, all its requirements provided. 

FACTS, MATTERS OP DEBATE. 

The discovery, generalization and in- 
terpretation of natural facts must in some 
instances be and continue matters of 
strong difference. From fear of error, 
subversive of much good and entailing 
painful and wide-reaching -evils, facts will, 
as in the past and present, be required to 
face most stubborn criticisms, and to long 
occupy tentative grounds before attaining 
full recognition. 

It is still further true that the claim- 



ANTAGONISMS VALUABLE. 25 

ants of the new are not always men of 
real progress. They may be less lovers 
of facts than of change. It is also the case 
that with the conservators of real prog- 
ress — those who are most largely contrib- 
uting to the advancement of mankind, 
must sometimes be included of those who 
are most rigidly opposed to the new facts. 
The facts may not be presented in essen- 
tial completeness, and thus fail to be seen 
in the character belonging to them. In 
such instances the adverse criticisms may 
be of extreme importance, not in their 
rejection, but in their more distinct sepa- 
ration from accretions which would be 
misleading in their application. Thus 
Mr. Herbert Spencer's ontological facts, 
applied when not completely developed, 
to a large extent justified agnosticism. 
Sharp and persistent adverse criticism, 
probably joined with a more critical 
inspection by himself at his own election, 
resulted in a modification strongly toward 



26 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

theism. That the development is not 
yet complete in respect to the involved 
facts, may be why the change to a full 
Christian theism is still waiting to be 
avowed by the truly great master, as 
essential to a complete vSynthetical Phi- 
losophy. 

AN ERA OF STATISTICS. 
No age has equaled the present in 
labor expended upon the collection and 
tabulation of facts into statistics. For 
achievement in this field of work is 
scholarship mainly noted at the present. 
Facts, the objective basis of knowledge, 
must be first in hand. Upon their full 
development and correct generalization 
depends the possibility of correct induc- 
tive work which shall indicate the way to 
other facts. As one individual may not 
be a fair representative of a race, a single 
or a few facts may imperfectly represent 
an order of facts. From this, large col-, 
lections represent special values as being 



THE EPOCH PERMANENT. 27 

the better means of that certitude which 
the fastidiously exacting spirit of reason 
at this advanced day aspires to, and 
strongly impresses the fact that less than 
at any time in the past is the possibility 
of even a temporary relaxation of the 
firm hold with which the general mind is 
adhered to science. 

That the epoch of science is permanent 
when fully attained, is rendered necessary 
in that it supplies to the mind not only 
what is permanently needful but what is 
permanently sufficient for progress — for 
progress toward the completion of every 
attribute and normal calling of life. 
Only increase of facility for its more 
expeditious application could be a further 
need, and for this the devisive reason is 
itself the agent; devised by the indivi- 
dual for himself, or by the more attained 
individual or individuals above for him. 

The plant may be retarded indefinitely, 
or be by accident required to start anew 



28 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

from the very root, but its inherent tend- 
ency is never from the blossom toward 
the root. So the mind may be retarded, 
and in the long course, by some manner 
of enforced neglect in ancestry, may 
appear successively on even lower levels 
in posterity, down to a minimum grade, 
where reason may be little above the 
germinal state; but like the plant it is 
endowed with but the tendency to unfold 
toward the more comprehensive form and 
state — that of pure reason on its normal 
data. 

With the fact in view, then, that reason 
in its normal relation with natural facts 
is the culminating epoch of mind, we 
have but to consider whether a firm land- 
ing therein is now made, to be assured 
that the present interest in science is of 
final continuance. Certainly if the pres- 
ent grip is not permanent, the permanent 
is coming, to fully re-enact the present 
and above it to endlessly enlarge the 



THE UNDERLYING POWER. 20. 

never-completed life, in all its normal 
parts, by the aid of this ever-present pro- 
vision, which is hardly aught else than 
the working of the Divine Hand itself. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GENERAL IMPRESSION OF THE ACCEPTANCE 
OF NATURAL FACTS AS THE BASIS OF TRUTH. 
-RELIGIOUS CLAIMS IN THE PRESENCE OF THE 
IMPRESSION.— THE RELATION OF PROPHECY 
WITH RELIGION. 

Before this prevailing impression that 
natural facts are the only real basis of 
certitude, every kind of proposition and 
of thought stands affected. And propo- 
sitions failing to visibly harmonize with 
such facts are received by a small and 
lessening percentage of the thinking 
public. Still deferential to long and 
highly-honored schools of philosophy 
and religion, out of memory of the rich 
sacrifices they have cost and the exceed- 
ingly great help they have been to man- 
kind, and continue to be, thoughtful 
people demand less promptly the chain 
of facts from the physical to the psychi- 

(30) 



RELIGION PERMANENT. 3 1 

cal, in respect to these phases of being, 
than would be true under other circum- 
stances. 

This applies especially to religion, and 
the people more largely endowed with it. 
But though unable to indicate the place 
it holds in the domain of natural fact, 
they are prompted, by the residence of 
this force in the consciousness, to believe 
its relation, however remotely, with nat- 
ural facts exists, and that time will unfold 
it to view. Added to this is the fact that 
religion is, like reason, a factor in the self 
of man, and though, like reason, when 
deprived of its appointed nourishing 
environment it declines to very low levels, 
it never wholly expires. Neither is there 
great danger now, when there is so much 
well-grounded intelligence in respect to 
the facts in nature, mineral and mental, 
that religion will suffer beyond a tem- 
porary decline, in the crisis at hand, — 
while the general mind -is feeling its way 



32 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

to additional data therefor in the domain 
of nature. 

It is, however, a matter of fact that, 
generally, thoughtful religious people are 
no longer fearing for the interests of reli- 
gion in that domain, so often have they 
seen its interpretations improved, and ren- 
dered more attractive and influential from 
contact therewith. An example of this 
is to be noted in the sublime exaltation of 
the Deity by the Copernican astronomy 
over Ptolemian. If by the light of the 
latter men have not worshipped more 
continually and formally, their worship 
has been more profound and elevating. 
They have worshipped more in spirit and 
in truth, as before them the Deity passed 
from the fetish limits of only one world 
to infinitude over a limitless realm of 
worlds, while at the same time losing no 
presence from the least detail of being in 
any world. 

In the cosmogony of Genesis another 



DIVINE PRESENCE. 33 

example is supplied. Passing from the 
prevailing theory of twenty-four or twelve 
hour days to that of days of cosmic time 
of indefinite duration, makes not only 
better harmony with science, but, as well, 
better harmony in the text itself, which 
finally groups all these days in one day — 
a day of days. 

This qualification also is added by the 
new interpretation suggested by science: 
The Deity is retained upon the work. 
Though having ended the series by the 
placing of man, and now resting as to 
the placing of the series, work in details 
continuing, advises us that the hand of 
the Deity is still active upon it all, and 
will continue while a chemical or vital 
force, of whatever order, remains on the 
plane of the finite. Comprehending 
what by this view must be the sphere 
and character of the Deity, the full 
impression of the thought on apprecia- 
tive intelligence is electrical. There is 



34 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

suggested with great force the thought in 
the statement, "Thou openest thine hand 
and satisfieth the desire of every living 
thing." The ministry to every normal 
appetite is by the same hand which 
erected it. And in order to this that 
hand is continuous in all the chemistry 
in the universe, and in all the vital forces 
which are seen supplying direction and 
placement to it. But this is not all. No 
less are the supplies to the mental, the 
moral, esthetical, and every other divinely 
appointed passion supplied by the same 
ministry. 

The ideal human life, to whom the 
Divine companionship, is ever the supreme 
happiness, would not fail to testify that 
this view is very much more valuable 
than the old which it replaces, in which 
the Deity, having wholly finished the 
series, resided apart, with only now and 
then, for special purposes, returning to it. 

Then, science being seen to have rather 



AN IMPORTANT SERVICE. 35 

aided than impeded religion, by throwing 
light rather than shadow on the revered 
standard, and rendering it more binding 
on the sober judgment and conscience of 
mankind who have paused to adequately 
reflect, it may be seen that to apply 
science to religion there is but this 
hazard left — that it may, for a time, be 
hurtfully misapplied. However, the 
force of this objection is much weakened 
by recalling that the Bible itself has 
been, and must now be, to some extent, 
hurtfully misapplied. The suggestion, 
too, is pertinent in this place, that since 
science has corrected the misuse of the 
elements of nature in so many particu- 
lars and rendered them incomparably 
more serviceable to man, it might do the 
same for the Bible. 

If, then, this impression concerning 
the importance of natural facts for bases 
of theories prevails, and-by the nature of 
the case is permanent and enlarging, is 



36 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

not the religious principle in man liable 
to deteriorate proportionately, and to lose 
of its healthful and essential influence on 
his life, if it fails to be shown that its 
presence in life is due to a class of veri- 
fiable facts constituent and inalienable 
in the being of man? And with the 
thoughtful of the class with whom the 
prevalence of a pure religion is the 
supreme good of the people, its early 
adjustment, judiciously and correctly, on 
such a basis might well be a highly grati- 
fying prospect. It were its recovery, in 
many minds, from the domain of specu- 
lative sentiment to that of reliable fact, 
and from doubt to certitude; and thus 
conditioning it to be more widely and 
effectively utilized in the advancement 
of the human estate. 

It is noted that there is an absence of 
a certain healthful grip which religion 
used to have on the body of its following, 
which may not be wholly explained with- 



AN IMPORTANT GRIP. 37 

out assigning a prominent cause therefor 
to be the lack of certitude felt in respect 
to it as being radically functional. And 
this lack of certitude prevailing more 
largely with people of culture than with 
the uncultured, the recurrence of a more 
potent influence from religion on the 
human deportment must delay till the 
needed verification becomes possible. 

This grip it were important to regain, 
while also retaining that stimulant to 
intellectual achievement — the entire con- 
fidence in pure natural facts — by which 
so largely it was lost. And this recovery 
would be a most befitting work of science 
itself. Indeed, as seen, a part of this 
work of recovery no other agency can 
accomplish. With the class to which 
these observations apply, merely an in- 
crease of fervor in religion or an enlarge- 
ment of the general interest therein, 
would only denote a more acute phase 
of superstition, and, would hardly in 



38 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

the least achieve anything toward their 
reclaim to it. The wider prevalence and 
greater intensity of this passion, in what- 
ever measures, could avail little in restor- 
ing it or a belief in it with this class, 
which tends to grow all the time more 
numerous. Only to be shown that it is 
founded on natural facts, and is indispen- 
sable to a fully cultured life, might suf- 
fice. This accomplished, religion and its 
rites, devised in harmony with its own 
natural provisions, as mainly they now 
are, might presently be expected to be 
participated in as zealously by this class 
as by others. This would be all the more 
probable from the fact that then would be 
measurably seen that religion is a nutri- 
ment to life, needed for the best results 
in all callings ; as bread and water are 
bodily needs with people alike every- 
where. The importance of the natural 
bond which unites the aspiring dependent 
finite life with the all-helpful Infinite, 



A NATURAL ADJUSTMENT. 39 

could not be long overlooked ; not even 
by the one employed upon the most 
material pursuits. 

It may be judged that the scientific phi- 
losopher, Mr. Spencer, would not now be 
obliged to revise or re-interpret his elabo- 
rately written Synthetic Philosophy, if 
originally the facts had been included 
which the active religious sense, in a mind 
so thoughtful, would hardly have failed to 
indicate. The same omission, too, must 
ere long require revision of like character 
in other branches of the same general 
philosophy. 

Every passion, besides its contribution 
of valuable special sentiment, is valuable 
to the economy of life by directing intel- 
ligence to the class of facts with which 
it is specially related, and which are 
essential to the full understanding of all 
other facts, and without which no philos- 
ophy can be complete and wholly sound. 
Scarcely less, then, is the necessity to the 



4-0 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

world of science than to the world of 
religion itself, that the founding of relig- 
ion on the immutable facts of being 
be early accomplished. 

Neither class would realize the fears by 
some entertained in the accomplishment 
of this end. Science has feared and 
realized domination from religion. This 
would not follow. None of its plans and 
methods would be impinged upon from 
that source. Religion would only be 
present in the domain of science by its 
facts, and those facts would be to be 
judged of by all the freedom with which 
material facts are passed upon, and with 
the purpose to secure from it greater 
advantages to life. Religion, on the 
other hand, has feared and to some extent 
realized, materialization and seculariza- 
tion from the admission of science. This 
has resulted from the unscientific substitu- 
tion of physical for psychical, or spiritual, 
facts, which error could not continue. 



IMPORTANT OMISSIONS. 41 

As an illustration of the relation 
which might be expected to continue 
therefrom, it may be seen that the domain 
of faith may be recognized but never 
entered by science. The very terms by 
which it is known, place a limit to 
science. Faith is the unverified appre- 
hension. Science is the verified. Both 
are due to provisions found in the econ- 
omy of rational life — as permanent as 
life, with their differences and their 
different uses as continuous. So, too, of 
other characteristics and elements of 
religion. The relation of the finite with 
the infinite, including certain feeling 
reciprocities, science could recognize, 
but could substitute nothing for the 
acts of praise and petition. Science 
could recognize a law of inspiration and 
necessities for its employment, and thence 
a necessity for a Bible in the interest of 
human culture in morals and religion; 
and while it might be- the first to sit in 



42 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

judgment upon its interpretations, it 
would be without the means of substitut- 
ing for its prerogatives in its domain. 

THE RELATION OF PROPHECY WITH 
RELIGION. 

The discussion of religion from the 
standpoint of science is not here entered 
upon, but will appear, it is hoped, in 
due time, under its own proper topic. 
Prophecy, though not in itself a matter 
of religion, yet involves facts which are 
basic with religion, which its successful 
discussion brings, to some extent, prom- 
inently to view. In consideration of 
this, the somewhat prominent allusions 
to the importance of scientific data for 
religion have here been made ; leaving us 
to hope for a larger result from the study 
in hand than the important abstract facts 
which determine the transmission of 
thought and the presciencing of the 
future. 



AN IMPORTANT BEARING. 43 

Prophecy discovers an all-sentient 
mind, and the laws and methods of inter- 
course between minds, from the least to 
the Supreme. In the establishment of 
these facts in the observing, the senti- 
ment of religion would be confirmed — 
the essential data for its verity would be 
attained. Ordinary powers of reflection 
would by these facts be led to see that in 
the Infinite Mind dwelt a supervising 
and disciplinary interest in the affairs of 
man to the last particulars ; and also that 
in some way and somewhere the full 
kindness and love of God for man was 
waiting to be fully seen and realized, thus 
stimulating the bond of reciprocal love 
between the Deity and his child, and 
enlarging this essential channel of vital 
supply to mind and soul. 



CHAPTER III. 

REASONS WHY PROPHECY HAS NOT APPEARED 
PROMINENTLY AS A SUBJECT OF PHILOSOPHY 
AND SCIENCE.-PROPHECY A LEGITIMATE SUB- 
JECT FOR SCIENCE. 

Why prophecy, so extensively and con- 
tinually believed in by the human fam- 
ily from the earliest records, is hardly at 
all noticed in works of philosophy and 
hence of science, may be explained by 
two facts. Belief in it as of special acts of 
the Deity, in person or by angels or other 
agencies at His direction — that it was 
supernatural and wholly unrelated with 
the domain of nature, and hence wholly 
out of the field of the student of princi- 
ples which had no connections beyond 
nature, would bar it from the domain of 
philosophers. 

This alone were sufficient reason for 
its almost non-appearance in their labors, 

(44) 



THE PAST IN THE PRESENT. 45 

where every other phase of life has had a 
place. With this position, philosophy 
had also no data against its admission as 
a fact — a fact, however, with which it 
could not deal. When accepted, nothing 
was asked to be known about it but the 
genuineness and import of the given 
instance. 

However, there was, on the part of 
philosophy, another fact, operating to the 
same end as effectually. The doctrine of 
sensuous apprehension being the basis of 
knowledge, a doctrine which may be said 
to have originated with philosophy, only 
what was of the present could be a matter 
of knowledge. The past could be a 
matter of knowledge through the office of 
memory, continuing it into the present. 
But only to the extent which this 
function was efficient in its performance, 
was the experience of the past converted 
into a present and into a matter of knowl- 
edge. This could not apply to the future, 



46 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

as a matter of course. It had no record — 
was not a matter of experience — had no 
representation in the present, and hence, 
by the terms so far in hand, was impossible 
to be a matter of knowledge ; rendering, on 
that account, prophecy an impossibility 
to philosophy. Hence, as a philosopher, 
no philosopher could write on prophecy. 

Kant, of the last century, in the open- 
ing of his introduction to " Kritik of 
Pure Reason," in this particular speaks 
for all schools of all known ages, when 
he says: 

"That all our knowledge begins with 
experience there can be no doubt. For 
how is it possible that the faculty of cog- 
nition should be awakened into exercise 
otherwise than by means of objects that 
affect our senses, and partly of themselves 
produce representations, partly rouse our 
powers of understanding into activity, to 
compare, to connect, or to separate these, 
or to convert the raw material of our 
sensuous impressions into a knowledge of 



A COMMON THEORY. 47 

objects, which is called experience? In 
respect to time, therefore, no knowledge 
of ours is antecedent to experience, but 
begins with it." 

Besides the confusion which remains 
as to philosophy, after having pursued 
the labyrinthine criticisms and counter- 
criticisms by one school upon another, in 
substance this postulate by Kant is found 
to clearly remain of each, that the 
domain of knowledge lies only under the 
present. 

With the advent of the era of science, 
though nothing in the way of evidence 
was added, came a strengthening and 
enlarging of this impression, about in the 
ratio of the progress of science; not as a 
logical and necessary consequence, which 
would have required, to some extent, a 
revision of the data, which was not 
undertaken, but from the greater interest 
taken in material phenomena which so 
largely withdrew the mind from the 
supersensuous to the sensuous. 



48 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

This exclusion of the future from the 
domain of the knowable is not a result of 
modern progress in science. It is not of 
the fruitage of science. It is an entail- 
ment of the elaborate, severe, but closely 
circumscribed thought of the past, and 
upon which science has not yet had occa- 
sion to bestow a requisite measure of 
attention. Science has not yet borne its 
fruit on this subject. It has been en- 
grossed with the fascinating labors on 
other fields of its domain. With its 
broadened thought and vastly more ver- 
satile resources it may be expected, when 
giving final utterance, to differ here, as in 
other matters, radically with the past. 

PROPHECY A LEGITIMATE SUBJECT FOR 
SCIENCE. 

That prophecy might appear a matter 
of little or no hope to science, could by 
many of strong materialistic prejudices 
be well judged, so obscure and remote to 



PREJUDICE IN THOUGHT. 49 

them would its data appear. Yet to per- 
sons equally versed in the conditions of 
science and equally accustomed to con- 
forming to them, what is a scientific fact 
might be assumed to be accepted by one 
as readily as by the other, whether it were 
a .fact in psychology or in mineralogy, 
and whether they were of the same ten- 
dencies toward materialism or psychism 
or not. But it has long been known that 
not all the prejudice and the one- 
sidedness of life are on the side of 
religion. One being reputed as a devoted 
scientist gives us no certain under- 
standing that.he is broad and fair-minded, 
and one who accepts facts impartially. 
So what might shortly become a matter 
of science might not so quickly become a 
theme of science. 

In a general way science may be under- 
stood to mean facts generalized in the 
understanding. x\nd the basic condition 
of science would, therefore, be a fact in 



50 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

apprehension or cognition ; the character 
of the fact, as to what order or class it 
might represent, being no condition what- 
ever of its admission. No other condi- 
tions enter into science anywhere, under 
whatever special name it bears, as science 
of chemistry or science of mind, etc., etc. 

It now becomes ns to inquire into cog- 
nition, the knowing attribute of life. 
This phenomenon, which is evident to self 
alone, or also to a self in psychological 
union with the self, or in union by con- 
ventional modes of transfer, is subjective 
consciousness of fact. This conscious- 
ness, as observed, in substan.ce, is as truly 
of the mental, when in objective relation, 
as of the mineral. 

Objective phenomena may be delusive 
— subjective creations merely, and not 
verities, which, again, is as true, and 
perhaps as common, of one order of 
phenomena as of another. In such cases 
the cognitive faculty may operate as 



CRITERIA AS TO VERITY. 5 1 

accurately as at other times, but through 
some form of delusive media. Then, 
also, accurate apprehension and hence 
accurate knowledge are not always entire 
certainties ; and a true fact is not always 
in hand when one is being realized. 

Then the next matter of importance to 
know is what are criteria as to verity of 
facts. The major may be, continuity in 
sameness — continued sameness of the phe- 
nomena over broad territory and over 
long reaches of time. Concurrence of 
many witnesses over wide fields and of a 
succession of extensive time would estab- 
lish absence of delusion. Conformity 
with other and well-established facts, too, 
would justify reliance. 

The sense of knowledge is, therefore, 
everywhere qualified by these conditions. 
It should be remembered that while below 
an absolutely perfect and unlimited capac- 
ity, the liability to this error of appre- 
hension is common, and is more prevalent 
with the more limited. 



52 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

It is then to be considered whether the 
facts to be alleged on which a scientific 
recognition of prophecy is claimed are 
legitimate, — are truly facts. But one is 
here submitted, and is deemed sufficient, 
while others will be in place elsewhere. 
Vision falls in a straight line from the or- 
gan of sight; but it may fall on a medium 
which will throw it in all conceivable di- 
rections. So, while the doctrine of the 
schools that knowledge is possible of the 
present only, is in a sense — the sense in 
which they viewed it — correct, that it 
there, in that so-called present, recogni- 
zes, and correlates with, a principle in 
which the mental vision is converted in 
the direction of both past and future, is 
the essential matter which they failed to 
recognize in its full importance, and 
which is yet to be given the attention be- 
longing to it in science. The discern- 
ment of a principle is certainly an expe- 
rience and an act of cognition, the dis- 



A MODE OF VISION. 53 

cerninent making the principle discerned 
as truly a fact as any contained in 
nature. So induction, the leading method 
of knowledge and science, together with 
all its provisions, is a fact — a fact of the 
clearest and most extensive verification. 

This medium of vision, by its function 
to apprehend and estimate tendencies, 
conveys discernment from the immediate 
to the remote fact — from the facts in 
nature which are most superficial to 
those which are most remote beneath, 
and from those which lie under the merid- 
ian present to those which lie indefi- 
nitely deep in the past and future. The 
future is, then, not finally concealed from 
knowledge; neither, in practice, does the 
scientific world assume it to be. 

When the data are not all so well in 
hand, it with less confidence indicates 
future facts. With the subtle causes 
which are lying back of the atmospheric 
changes so far from the means of knowl- 



54 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

edge, the Director of "The Weather 
Bureau" puts out indications of storms 
and calms, with reserve. He neverthe- 
less puts them out. He has looked over 
beyond the agnostic line and there dis- 
cerned to some extent. A better example 
is seen when the astronomer packs his 
instruments and boards the steamer for a 
remote part of the earth or the sea, to 
take some advantage of an eclipse 
which he saw years before occurring 
there at a time which is still some 
months in the future. He is hurrying 
there to be in time with his instrument 
clamped to the position in the heavens 
where, at the day and second when the 
phenomenon, on its way out of the deep 
future into the past, shall emerge upon 
the available meridian present. And if 
the data for computing the special phe- 
nomena after which he is looking had 
been as fully at command as were those 



PROPHECY AS A SCIENCE. 55 

of the eclipse, his journey would not be 
necessary. 

When science will have entered upon 
the investigation of the facts of induc- 
tion in the domain to which it belongs, 
prophecy will have entered upon its 
career as a science; never in its merely 
human employment to penetrate deeply 
into the details of the future, but to dis- 
cover a basis for the claims of such pene- 
tration, and to thence discover, also, or 
approve, as matters of science, certain 
spiritual forces in the economy of being, 
operating universally, in varying meas- 
ures, in rational life, and by the wise 
employment of which the growth of life 
in the needed direction, towards the best 
ends, will be most speedily promoted. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ARGUMENT FOR PROPHECY.— THE PRELIMI- 
NARY CONDITIONS STATED. 

It could be no detriment to the cause of 
Christianity if the successful discussion 
of prophecy should discover no miracle. 
Rather, provided the great essentials 
which are claimed for it remained, the 
verifications would be a triumph for faith ; 
and that great beneficence to man which 
it constitutes, instead of hostilities from 
unbelief of its claims would find eager- 
ness for its helps. 

Since man is restricted to the finite 
sphere, on which account he is ever a 
learner, a follower after clues and guides, 
a searcher after the unknown, more dis- 
covery leads only to the use of more 
faith. And the believer in this looks 
with pleasure on the scene of struggle 

(56) 



NEEDLESS MYSTERY. 57 

going on about him respecting the scien- 
tific claims of spirit and religious faith, 
and is troubled only about temporary 
mistakes and delays, and their painful 
consequences. 

If prophecy as a principle should 
become solvable within the sphere of 
definable mental law, and if it should also 
appear that it is in at least small meas- 
ures native not alone with all finite rea- 
soning beings, but possibly with the un- 
reasoning as well, it would hold hardly 
less claim to the respect of the thought- 
ful religious public. Merely the with- 
drawal of a needless mystery from the 
device of the principle could not lessen 
the force of the customary impression 
that the idea of prophecy makes on the 
religious mind ; especially as thereby 
would be rendered more fully apparent 
its reality and its immeasurable impor- 
tance in the rearing of mankind. It 
would not fail to render more complete 



58 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

that regard for the Divine Being, so 
helpful to the mind and morals of man, 
whom this disclosure would more vividly 
reveal. 

Also, should it finally appear that of 
the dispensations of prophecy, in the 
main, the immediate source was in finite 
minds in the adjacent upper world, whose 
delegation to this duty could only have 
been from the consideration of special 
attainment in requisite wisdom to con- 
ceive what to communicate, and the most 
suitable means of imparting, the author- 
ity would be hardly less than from the 
Deity direct. The attainments thus re- 
quired would be sufficient for judgment 
of man's general needs in any day of his 
mundane history. Doubt could only be 
in respect to mortal instrumentality to 
correctly receive and transfer the intelli- 
gence imparted. And should it still 
further appear that these delegated minds 
instead of having received the prophecy 



THE TERM "PROPHECY". 59 

communicated, immediately from the 
Deity, derived it from their own superior 
inductive insight into the future, still the 
magnitude of its importance would hardly 
be made less than that which now 
Christian judgment generally accords to 
it. It would even then be authority in 
matters of belief above the highest 
merely human level ; and those levels, on 
account of environment, not ocurring to 
mortals, the authority, in substance, would 
so remain. And while by these conditions 
we would be hardly able to claim for it a 
proper Divine Revelation, we would have 
no means of going above the source to 
controvert their claims to represent the 
facts and requirements of the Deity. 

Two phases of mental achievement are 
referred to in the biblical use of the term 
prophecy : First, extraordinary insight 
into the phenomena having existence in 
the present; and second, sight extending 
over phenomena having existence in the 



60 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

future. In this treatise I shall have 
occasion to speak of the first only so far 
as may be necessary to indicate the con- 
ditions to which it is due, and how far it 
is related to the second ; observing that, 
in part, causes to which vision of futurity 
is due are effective in also withdrawing 
the vail from before the present. 

Pure prophecy, or the unconditional 
foretelling of events, premises an exist- 
ing future. It involves the determination 
of what is, not what may or will be, in 
coming time. If, then, pure prophecy 
exists, or has existed, there must be a 
sense in which coming time is present to 
view. That this sense can have exist- 
ence, in realizing measures, in every 
form of mind or in every sphere of the 
human mind, may not be claimed; but 
that it exists in fulness in the mind hav- 
ing in pure possession the unconditional 
future facts, may not be justly denied. 
Before this mind all within the infinite 



THE FINITE CONDITIONAL. 6 1 

extremes of time must be present. And 
for this, too, its eminence must be 
supreme. But a fully attained fact is 
unconditional — has passed out of the 
conditional. The tendencies which con- 
verged upon it and constitute it are 
accomplished. These, which were its 
conditions, are no more such. In the 
language of the day, the conditional fact 
is "converted" into the unconditional. 
And the mind which can follow these 
tendencies, unconfounded with the re- 
maining infinite multitude of tendencies, 
however distant from the present time, 
into this conversion, has in this future 
fact a present phenomenon lying before 
it. The mind, unable by the inductive 
process to follow tendencies to this 
extent, — unable to prolong the vision to 
this consummation, past all adjacent tend- 
encies, is obliged at last to see it only in 
prospect, — still in conditions, however 
near completion. To- this lot must be 



62 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

restricted all finite minds, when seeing in 
their own light. The future fact is ever 
conditional in the limited mind, unless 
made apparent through the vision of the 
Supreme Mind, by some possible means. 

To minds of this sphere, all future 
facts are environed with measures of 
uncertainty, however small, and cannot 
be fully known until verified by trans- 
piring in the arrival of that coming 
time in which they are placed. To these, 
in their own light, a pure present in the 
future is impossible. To such, however 
strong the realization, there is no exist- 
ing future fact. Theirs is a coming and 
contingent one. 

But with the greater mental altitude 
comes a wider present; one more ex- 
tended into both the future and the 
past. The response to vision is from a 
more extended field of time. Speaking 
exactly, however, the present represents 
no time — only the joining of time, "a 



THE MERIDIAN OF NOW. 63 

line where the past and future limit each 
other," of which time is excluded. 
Then, for the practical purposes in hand, 
I use the term "present" as denoting 
existence under the senses, which after 
all is rather a poor makeshift, consider- 
ing that the smallest instant, as readily 
as a cosmic period, is divisible into past 
and future. But this while not tech- 
nically correct is practically so, and has 
the merit of expressing what is com- 
monly understood by the term present. 
The present is then existence, static or 
dynamic, face to face lying before the 
perceiving powers. 

However, what is recognized through 
the physical senses requires of a present, 
a transit of time — a point, or rather a 
field, of arrival and departure, to which 
the range of the physical instrument is 
restricted. Perception by this instru- 
ment is only on the meridian of now. 
By it, without the inductive r leans of 



64 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

vision, no future could be visible, — that 
side would be wholly vacuous. And so, 
too, of the past, beyond the point where 
the register of transpiring experience 
begins. 

This gliding "now" with this view suffi- 
ciently broad, admits a train of imping- 
ing experiences which is being realized 
as a train of successions, separated by as 
many of the imaginary "present" lines. 
This series induction sees to be at each 
point divided into transpired and untrans- 
pired time — a past and a future, and 
that the recent past is the scarce less 
recent future, and that all pasts pre- 
viously were futures. It sees also that to 
pasts futures were ever joined, and, for 
want of evidence that the principle is dis- 
continued, sees a future ulterior to the 
immediate now, and with little less dis- 
tinctness as truly the untranspired as the 
transpiring time. 

Further still, induction sees in the 



UNTRANSPIRKD EVENTS. 65 

phenomena of being by which time is 
determinable, but with which it holds no 
essential relation, tendencies of abso- 
lutely fixed natures by which all its 
phases and facts exist. It sees these to 
have continued from pasts to futures in 
all the series; and, as before said, having 
and imagining no evidence of the discon- 
tinuance of the principle, and complying 
with the law of its own function, sees 
these also in the future executing their 
untranspired events. 

Of the number of these tendencies 
when taken in detail no approximation 
can be made, unless by the term infinite, 
which would scarcely be excessive in any 
of the departments of being. Regardless 
of any department of being, each having 
its own tendencies, the term tendencies 
applies as universally as do those of 
cause and effect, which are themselves 
possible only by the law of tendencies. 
Considering their unending numbers, 



66 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

only a beginning has been made in their 
attainment, while by reasoning minds an 
ending is impossible. However, still in 
the simple beginning of the indnctive 
observation, what seems a large measnre 
of progress has been made; which is 
being continued more and more rapidly 
with the ever-accumulating experience 
and the ever-enlarging capacity of the 
perceiving powers. Also, the operations, 
all told, are still upon a narrow field, with 
but few extending far out into coming 
time. But the vast investment of ener- 
gies by the human world, and its intense 
excitement after achievements to be made, 
are illustrations of how extensively and 
distinctly tendencies are seen extending 
into the future, and how confidently they 
are relied upon ; and also how largely 
their untranspired facts enter into the 
sum of present realizations. 

Deducting a proper allowance for 
human faith in the unseen, we still have 



VISION OF TENDENCIES. 67 

in all this strong proof that human 
apprehensions of tendencies seen extend- 
ing into and operating in the future have 
been, substantially, visions of untrans- 
pired facts, to be seen by the inductive 
eye only. 



CHAPTER V. 

PERCEIVING THE PHENOMENA OF THE FUTURE. 

From the standpoint of reliance placed 
on the preceding observations, which are 
but presentations of the prevailing con- 
victions of the thoughtful in respect to the 
laws in the premises, the matter of pre- 
sciencing the future will be of no difficult 
solution. 

In retaining the vision upon the line 
of facts thus brought in view, it will be 
observed that while by the physical mode 
of perception the mental eye is limited to 
the immediate now — sees only on that 
line — on the contrary, the inductive eye 
sees equally everywhere on the field of 
time, according to the measure of its 
attainment. The future and the past are, 
with respect to the execution of its func- 
tion, non-existent. 

(68) 



FINITE VISION LIMITED. 69 

The physical eye is limited in capacity 
to observing but §mall extents in either 
microscopic or telescopic depths. And 
with these limitations to the extent of 
this mode of vision must often be added 
lack of defining powers. For these fath- 
omless depths, apparent to the meridian 
of now, are required infinite power and 
purity of • vision to discern all in all 
details. And although much is seen 
when the telescope and microscope sup- 
plement the natural eye, as with the 
inductive, it must be said that only a 
beginning of discovery has been made. 
And if at times the inductive is markedly 
at fault, as much must be allowed for the 
physical. 

With considerable satisfaction as to 
reliableness, the astronomer by stellar 
phenomena penetrates by the physical eye 
millions of miles into stellar space ; with 
the inductive, millions of years into time 
past and future, with the probabilities of 



JO PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

accuracy in the one case about as strong 
as in the other. In respect to some direc- 
tions, vision of either order is hardly at 
all extended. In certain directions an 
investment of physical opaqueness inter- 
cepts quite all the light which the nature 
of the physical eye admits. Beyond the 
metallic screen, of thinnest texture, over 
the mass, lies the mysterious, the insolv- 
able to that order of vision, or to that 
measure of capacity for its apprehension. 
So, too, through the problem of self falls 
no inductive light in sufficient amount to 
reveal the principles that underlie and 
constitute self. Others are of the same 
or scarce less impenetrability. 

Such are the two general sources of 
human enlightenment — the sensuous and 
the inductive. Both are natural, reliable 
and permanent. With the weaker mind 
there is preference for the sensuous ; with 
the more attained, greater reliance is 
placed on the inductive. Either would 



LIMITS TO ERROR. J I 

be infallible by an infallible capacity. 
But however small it may be, the liability 
to the incurrence of failure is assured to 
all whose sphere rests beneath the infinite. 
But the finite foresees. Why does it not 
foresee more ? and more in detail ? This 
is answered by directing attention to the 
fact that just where the limits of mental 
perception fall is where error and dark- 
ness begin. With a wider range in that 
direction the error met at that limit, 
would be impossible. With this limita- 
tion, however, not all contingencies are, 
at that point, foreseeable. The related 
forces are not all seen, nor what is their 
strength, nor the relativeness of their 
strength; all of which enter into the 
determination of the future fact. 

Then would not to a more attained 
mind more future facts be visible? Are 
not to increased capacities uncertainties 
more removed? And is the principle not 
applying to all the series toward the 



72 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

Infinite, by which to the more attained 
future phenomena are more in view, and 
the future is more illuminated ? And 
would not by an infinite mind every 
future fact in every detail be seen? 
Would not the whole system of chains of 
facts existing commensurate with infinite 
time lie in that vision fully displayed — 
an infinitely extended present ? With no 
other attributes or qualities than those of 
the human, to an infinite mind such a 
present would be a necessity, while still, 
by the conditions involved, recognizing 
time in all its measurements in applica- 
tion to phenomena, to the least particular. 
What other mode of perceiving may 
characterize the Deity is scarcely within 
even conjecture. Whether we may speak 
of a sense of contact as a means, analo- 
gous to that seen indispensable in finite 
being in deriving experiences from envi- 
ronment of whatever order, will depend 
upon what views are taken of the Deity 



PERSONALITY IN DEITY. 73 

as to personality. With His personality 
equivalent to a self, which is indispensa- 
ble to a thought-embodying existence, 
there would, it seems, also be necessary 
an apprehending mode, analogous to 
human sensuousness, from which it 
might not be irreverent to suppose, con- 
sidering the human descendancy to be 
from the Deity, the human mode may 
have descended — a mode which after the 
physical demise will still continue with 
it. And whatever may be the means of 
harmonizing this view of the Deity with 
that of his Infinity, the means, though 
difficult of discernment, are not to be 
pronounced impossible till the possibles 
are all counted. But so far as concerns 
the original presciencing of the future, 
conditionally by the finite and uncondi- 
tionally by the Infinite, the actually 
existing, everywhere transpiring, and 
only known means, the inductive, suffices 
for it all, everywhere -and in all states and 
beings. 



CHAPTER VI. 

KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE EVENTS.-PROPHECY A 
COMMUNICATION OF THE ENDS RATHER THAN 
OF THE MEANS OF DISCOVERY.— HOW COM- 
MUNICATED. 

People of the same level of attainment, 
and of the same general surrounding and 
training, have little trouble in exchang- 
ing sentiments. What very much aids 
in this is that a large part of what is 
being communicated is in character the 
same as that which is already in the 
experience of the recipient. And the 
considerable anticipation of it helps to 
bridge over the defective and incomplete 
conventional devices of voice and gesture. 
But essentially the same process neces- 
sary in the execution of a thought is 
required in receiving it, and no measure 
of light bestowed will supply the need of 
a receiving capacity of proper form and 

(74) 



CAPACITY NECESSARY. 75 

extent. The want of perception is not 
always owing to the absence of light or 
to the want of the presence of facts. 

All this is involved in prophecy. Not 
only may all the facts be present, bnt, as 
well, minds brilliantly apprehending and 
impressing them, yet without a recipient 
capacity all on the recipient side will 
remain dark in respect to those facts. 
The grade of the impressing mind would 
signify nothing till the adaptation of the 
recipient capacity could be effected. But 
it is not the knowledge of computing ends, 
which could be imparted only to a larger 
capacity, which usually is communicated, 
but the ends only. 

PROPHECY A COMMUNICATION OE ENDS 

RATHER THAN OF THE MEANS OF 

THEIR DISCOVERY. 

It is not here seen that the common 
course and means of human development 
in this life have not supplied instances of 



j6 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

the required enlargement of the inductive 
faculty, to have originally attained facts 
of the future, in measures of distinct- 
ness and detail, sufficient to justify a 
claim of prophetic authority. However, 
we are lacking a record of such. The 
most attained in inductive achievements, 
save in astronomy, have ventured to state 
but little of the future with the detail 
that characterizes prophecy in the con- 
ventional sense. 

On the contrary, insight into the 
future, prophetically, seems ever to have 
been through borrowed vision. The 
matter to be prophesied might not be above 
the simplest capacity as a thing to be un- 
derstood in itself, though as a matter of 
futurity requiring superhuman discern- 
ment, and depend for a revelation before 
its time of transpiring, on a capacity not 
necessarily extraordinary, if upon it was 
reflected the light of the superior mind 
containing it ; to the weaker it being 



ENDS AND NOT PROCESSES. JJ 

made visible in the perceptions or by way 
of the perceptions of the superior. 

With comparatively moderate math- 
ematical attainments one may be able to 
see the result of a calculation very intel- 
ligently, while being much lacking in 
capacity to receive the mathematical 
light which led to the result. Prophecy 
gives the future ends of tendencies — 
future facts — results of processes of per- 
ception, ends which in themselves may 
be of easy comprehension; and so are 
altogether different matters, in this re- 
spect, from the processes which originally 
led to the discovery of those ends in their 
concealment in the future. 

One for whom the process of original 
discovery of future events is possible 
might well prophesy. But by the facts 
here brought forward prophecy is happily 
not limited to subjects of that elevated 
sphere. 

There is, then, to be considered the 



jS PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

means of this transference of mental 
light. And here the field abruptly 
widens over many classes of psycholog- 
ical facts, the most of which my pre- 
scribed limits will oblige me to wholly 
pass by. As to how mental perceptions 
are imparted to a neighboring percipient 
and so become common, among the 
several answers to be given may be a 
reference to the simple fact that, sur- 
rounded by a common medium of vision 
in which all who are of the same organs 
of vision may participate, people have in 
that medium a common means of appre- 
hension. The medium and object re- 
vealed being common, one thus enters 
into and utilizes another's means of per- 
ception ; in short, perceives thereby what 
the other perceives, to the extent that the 
positions and capacities are the same. 

However, by this mode only to a lim- 
ited extent and with no pure certainty, 
are the thoughts of another perceivable. 



PERCEIVING THOUGHT. 79 

By realizing his own thought and that 
the conditions of the neighboring mind 
are as his own, one, by analogy, could 
know very truly the thoughts, in outline, 
occupying the other mind. Indirect as 
this mode is, and illogically as it may 
seem to apply to the main question, the 
general verdict of mankind, neverthe- 
less, is that this is perception of neigh- 
boring thought. The rallying in respect 
to cases of this kind : " We saw it 
together, and I know that he saw that it 
was square and not round, long and not 
short, black and not white," etc., etc., are 
evidence that this is generally accredited 
as a mode of perceiving the thought of 
another. And so of the entire sensuous 
surrounding of self, when the excitants 
of sense can be made common : "We 
have heard it together and he knows 
the sound was " so and so." We tasted 
it together and he knows," etc., etc.; or, 
" We felt it to together, and he knew it 
was hot and not cold," etc. 



80 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

By this being universally accepted as 
perception of adjacent thought, teaching 
on the sensuous plane becomes possible. 
The imparting and receiving minds being 
joined by these common media of per- 
ception, by a common observation appre- 
hending objective existences on this 
plane, of whatever sense, the imparting 
mind is enabled to point out to the re- 
ceiving mind, and thus transfer to it its 
own mental perceptions. All this, too, 
would apply to any analogous common 
environment to be anticipated of any 
state inhabitable by the mind of man. 

But still another mode remains to be 
referred to, which is, however, but a 
further application of the one just con- 
sidered, and is one largely concerned in 
prophecy. The thought of the same 
order of mind is homologous in all indi- 
viduals of that order, and is apprehended, 
as to the sentiment it imports, by its 
aspect derived from the universally ap- 



THE MEDIA REALITIES. 8 1 

plying laws of mental construction. 
This aspect impinged upon a common 
medium, is by means of it brought 
within the consciousness of the co- 
occupant neighbor. The conception of 
one mind thus becomes the perception of 
another. And, to some extent, limited 
by the realizing capacity, the subjective 
state of one mind becomes the objective 
state of another. 

Let it now be recalled that such media 
are not myths, but existences manifest in 
the conduct of the physical by the men- 
tal everywhere, to which there is here no 
place for reference in particular, and 
these statements will be quite incontro- 
vertible ; and one needs only to think 
along this line of observation to be able 
to place upon it a full reliance. The so- 
called mind-reading which the schools, 
with indifferent success, have generally 
sought to set aside as a superstition, or 
as a vagary by superficial observers, 



82 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

is gaining recognition. Though never 
wholly wanting in support from the best 
names of science, recent researches in 
psychology have developed much in its 
favor ; both from , the science and from 
the facts illustrative of its provisions. 
And it is anticipated that with a little 
more headway made in this direction, 
mind-reading, though difficult in most 
instances to clearly determine, as a prin- 
ciple, will be generally recognized. 

The principle of mind-reading, also, 
provides for its own proper employment, at 
all states of its completeness, according as 
the conditions are favorable ; but in its 
greater efficiency is employed only when 
called for in the culture of life. For it 
must not fail to appear that as the more 
effective measures of these prerogatives 
of mind appear on the higher levels, over 
all is to be expected a higher order of judi- 
ciousness, — that these provisions in na- 
ture may not be made the sport of danger- 



FOR GENERAL BENEFICENCE. 83 

ous spontaneity and chance, but are re- 
served for use only under a state of suf- 
ficient moral intelligence, in an economy 
of general beneficence. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN EXTREMES OF 
MIND.— MODE OF THE HIGHER WITH THE 
LOWER. 

The mode of the transfer of thought and 
perception being now indicated to the 
extent here admissible,* and quite suffi- 
ciently for the present purpose ; and also 
the mode of attaining the facts of the 
future having been presented, another 
principle underlying prophecy claims at- 
tention. In a dispensation of prophecy 
the fact must be considered that not only 
an especially high order of minds is nec- 
essarily involved in the conditions as 
sources of the availing helps to the need- 
ful recipients, but that at times truths 
from the finally Supreme Mind are to be 

*For quite a full study of this part of the subject, 
see my work, " The Consolations of Science," Chapters 
15 and 16. 

(84) 



FROM HIGHER TO LOWER. 85 

brought to the perceptions of very moder- 
ate capacities. Of the mode of this 
transfer, while not assuming to specify 
what must be that adopted by superiors 
of whose range of vision and powers 
above our own we can know nothing, it 
is to be remarked that certain principles 
pertaining to perception supply light as 
to what would seem, where perfected, 
means quite sufficient for outline impres- 
sions from minds of indefinitely high 
order upon minds much below. 

The inductive mode of perception we 
have seen to be the process of original 
discovery — the enlargement of vision 
from the individual standpoint outward, 
and what is not seeing by merely intui- 
tion. Then we saw the perceiving powers 
apprehending by the perceptions of adja- 
cent minds — by a common medium of men- 
tal perception analogous to that of solar 
light, or the mediums of others of the phys- 
ical senses, when available. But in neither 



86 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

of these modes did we see thoughts above 
the capacity of the recipient transferred. 
However, neither did we see by either 
mode the versatility in capacity of the 
individual to apprehend unequally of the 
phenomena by direct or by proxy vision ; 
that, in one instance, of the mathematical 
more may be apprehended than of the 
musical by the same mind, or of the 
spiritual more than of the physical, etc. 
These versatilities are often of great con- 
trast with the general level of the indi- 
vidual's aggregate capacity. In fact, 
from the special investment of mental 
energy upon a given line of mental 
activity, the natural result would be a 
depletion in other directions. Neither 
did we note the fact that the same special 
variety of capacity is widely variable, and 
constantly fluctuating above and below 
an average. 

It may not, then, be known to what sur- 
prising heights the extraordinary shap- 



ENVIRONMENT DEFINED. 87 

ing of circumstances may at times exalt 
any of the special orders of mental per- 
ception, there to apprehend truth of cor- 
responding eminence. The mind is condi- 
tioned in environment, which in the larger 
measure determines its efficiency, in 
whole or in any special part. Of what 
extent that environment may be reckoned 
is greatly various. 

With respect to the sensuous state, 
whether on the mineral or the spiritual 
plane, environment consists first of the 
personal embodiment, and secondly of the 
entire plane with which that embodiment 
is related.. Then, too, all psychological 
being beyond the limits of self is 
environment. It would, therefore, be 
impossible to approximate the influences 
and their special sources operating on the 
mind. But however efficient are those 
from the sensuous, the psychical being 
the superior can be more efficient, and 
may at any time be the procuring causes 
of the sensuous. 



55 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

Spontaneity of action is conceded to the 
material of any plane, from the laws of 
its own nature, and whenever acting, is 
doing so in obedience to its own laws, 
specially directed, however, it may be, in 
any case, by the psychical of the adjacent 
superior state, and finally by the Infin- 
ite. 

RELATION OE EPILEPSY AND PROPHECY. 

Then it is not at any time certainly 
known that when, as is at times seen, 
certain bodily disturbances are incident 
with great mental exaltations, the affair 
is wholly due to the operation of casual 
mundane causes. Thus epileptic neu- 
rosis is at times attended with quite strik- 
ing mental phenomena, in which Professor 
Maudsley, in his work, "Responsibility in 
Mental Diseases," ventures to find the 
means of a solution of the phenomena 
alleged as prophecy, inspiration, divina- 
tion, etc., and discovers them to be effu- 
sions of certain forms of this malady. 



EPILEPSY AND PROPHECY. 89 

He infers epilepsy of the prophets and 
seers of the Old Testament, and of Paul 
and Jesus of the New, from the fact that 
the people regarded them as mad and 
possessed of demons, and that they were 
in some cases subject to trances in char- 
acter indicating epilepsy. Again, some 
indicated it by extravagant deportment in 
connection with the exercise of the gift ; 
as, for example, Hzekiel at the river Che- 
bar, detailing on a tile, by a drawing, the 
siege of Jerusalem, and also illustrating 
the suffering of the people by lying on 
his side a painfully long time. Then, 
also, Jeremiah going on a journey to the 
Euphrates to hide a linen girdle in a cleft 
of rock, and again, after a considerable 
time, going to retake it and finding it de- 
composed, — all to illustrate how Israel and 
Judah, once the glory of the Lord, be- 
came his shame. He observes on this : — 
" If they were not mad, they imitated very 
closely some of its most striking features." 



90 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

But notwithstanding he sees these to 
be insanities of epileptic character, he 
recognizes frankly their good offices at 
times of these paroxysms in the intro- 
duction of valuable truth to the world. 
Here are his words : 

" But when we consider seriously what 
has come of these epileptic visions and 
ecstasies, we may well pause before ven- 
turing to declare what may or may not 
come of madness or allied conditions, and 
be cautious how we give credit to reve- 
lations which transcend the reach of our 
rational faculties. . . The novel mode 
of looking at things which is characteris- 
tic of the insane temperament, may be an 
intuitive insight, a sort of inspiration 
which labored reflection could never at- 
tain unto; it is the very opposite in action 
to that bond of habit which enthralls the 
mental life of the majority of mankind. 
The power of stepping out of the beaten 
track of thought, of bursting by a happy 
inspiration through the bonds of habit 
and originating a ne^v line of reflection, is 



A VALUABLE SUGGESTION. 9 1 

most rare, and should be welcomed in 
spite of its sometimes becoming extrava- 
gant or even descending into the vagaries 
of insanity" (pp. 53, 541.) 

Though not an exaggeration, this is a 
sublimely high tribute to the chief char- 
acters of Bible history, especially when 
considering the mineralistic school Mr. 
Maudsley represents. It would really 
establish for these prophets and seers an 
authority lacking little of completeness. 
Being well above the reach of ordinary 
perception by the inductive method, the 
otherwise highest on the human plane, 
this most complete wisdom obligates all 
logically disposed lives to a following. It 
could be of no consequence that it was 
uttered during these paroxysms, and that 
its deliverances were characterized by un- 
seemly deportments. It is, however, pos- 
sible that by a more extended acquain- 
tance with the history of these phenom- 
ena in the Bible, he might see this phe- 
nomenal insight with not a uniform prom- 



92 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

inence, characterizing some of these celeb- 
rities through the major part of a long 
life. This would be found true of Samuel, 
Isaiah, Blisha, Daniel, and others, of the 
Old Testament, and a considerable part 
of the Disciples in the New ; that with 
these it was quite as continuous as are any- 
other special endowments — poetry, liter- 
ature, etc. He might also recognize that 
to some extent there was preparation for, 
and cultivation of this gift, 1 — that there 
were what were called prophet schools 
which, besides dispensing the general 
knowledge of the times, taught what was 
known of the means of promoting this 
mode of insight. Blisha was for a time 
the intimate associate and perhaps pupil 
of Elijah ; and it incidentally appears that 
in the restoration of the Shunammite's 
son, he practiced the same method with 
which his " Father " Elijah restored the 
son of the woman of Zerapath. Also, 
there is a suggestive similarity in the 



PROPHECY INSTITUTIONAL. 93 

resort by which he saved the widow's sons 
from being sold for debt, and that by 
which Elijah had saved the woman of 
Zerapath, her son, and himself from starv- 
ation (see I. K. 17, and II. K. 4). 

However much or little beyond human 
acquiring is this superior thought, that 
certain measures of human knowledge of 
adaptation to its acquirements on the 
human part were communicable, is, from 
these and other facts, at least probable. 
And however frenzy may have character- 
ized the phenomena, prophecy was not, as 
Mr. Maudsley infers it to have been, a 
merely casual matter, but was to some 
extent institutional, and with reference to 
special ends. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

INTUITION AND INSPIRATION — THEIR RELATION. 

Still further, under the term, "intui- 
tion," which Mr. Maudsley here uses as 
somewhat interchangeable with "inspira- 
tion," are found classified a considerable 
list of mental phenomena, as to mode of 
perception, and closely allied with those 
of these epileptics, as to high order of 
spontaneity of mental insight, where no 
appreciable epilepsy is seen to have been 
present. One case, typical of many, for 
want of room must here suffice, and will 
be sufficient. It is of the somewhat famil- 
iar instance of Zerah Colburn, the intui- 
tional mathematician. So far as I know, 
of him no epilepsy has been alleged, and 
beyond this particular trait of mind, 
nothing extraordinary. 

(94) 



ZERAH COLBURN. 95 

"It was when the lad was under six 
years of age, and before he had received 
any instruction either in writing or in 
arithmetic, that he surprised his father 
by repeating the products of several 
numbers ; and then, on various arithmeti- 
cal questions being proposed to him, by 
solving them all with facility and correct- 
ness," observes Prof. Carpenter. 

At the age of eight years, in 181 2, he 
was brought in London before several 
eminent mathematicians, before whom he 
was reported to have displayed most 
astonishing mathematical insight, such 
as the following : 

"On being asked the square root of 
106.929, he answered 327, before the orig- 
inal numbers could be written down. He 
was then required to find the cube root of 
268.336.125, and with equal facility and 
promptness he replied 645. He was 
asked how many minutes there were in 
48 years, and before the question could be 
written down he replied, 25.228.800, and 



96 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

immediately afterward lie gave the cor- 
rect number of seconds. On being re- 
quested to give the factors which would 
produce 247.483, he immediately named 
941 and 263, which were the only two 
numbers from the multiplication of which 
it would result. On 171.395 being pro- 
posed, he named 5x34.279; 7x24.485; 
59x2.905; 83x2.065; 35x4.897; 295x581, 

and 413x415 Other numbers 

being proposed to him indiscriminately, he 
always succeeded in giving the correct 
factors, except in the cases of prime num- 
bers, which he discovered almost as soon 
as propounded" (Mental Physiology, 
Dr. W. B. Carpenter, pp. 232, 233). 

These are very much the more simple 
of the achievements cited. Mr. Francis 
Bailey, one of the examining mathemati- 
cians, observes that " on being interro- 
gated as to the methods by wmich he 
obtained these results the boy constantly 
declared that he did not know how the 
answers came into his mind." And 
further Mr. Bailey observed that, "in the 



COLBURN CONTRASTED 97 

extraction of roots and in the discovery 
of factors of large numbers, it did not 
appear that any operation could have 
taken place, since he gave answers imme- 
diately, or in a very few seconds, which, 
according to ordinary methods, would 
have required very difficult and laborious 
calculations." He further speaks of this 
as a sort of "divining power." 

Here by the boy — almost babe — Col- 
burn, whose mind was raised to those 
extreme mathematical levels inaccessible 
to specialists (as to methods employed, 
supposed, however, to be analogous to the 
principle of logarithms), strikingly re- 
minds one of the boy Samuel in the 
house of the chief sage of Israel, to 
whom he unfolded the mind of God ; or 
of the boy Joseph before Pharaoh, fore- 
telling in their order and numbers the 
coming years of plenty and famine ; or of 
the youth Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar, 
first relating to the king the uncommuni- 



98 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

cated dream itself, and then opening to 
him the unwelcome future which it pre- 
figured. 

The class of facts discovered by the 
young Colburn and that by the young 
Hebrews were not of the same order. 
The one was of numbers and the other 
was of events. But in other respects the 
cases present no material unlikeness. 
The young Hebrews claimed for their 
sentience inspiration from a known 
source ; Colburn for his an unknown. 
Possibly, if sharing the Hebrew habit of 
recognizing a directing intelligence pre- 
siding immediately over the human 
estate, Colburn, too, would have recog- 
nized back of the incoming thoughts a 
resident instructor or promptor, and 
would have so remarked upon his experi- 
ences, and with a reason hard to contro- 
vert. 

And now, bearing directly upon this, is 

the statement of Mr. Maudsley, that 



IN ESSENTIAL SAMENESS. 99 

sometimes the highest thoughts are dis- 
played by these epileptic subjects; having 
special reference to Bible instances- 
prophets, etc. After allowing, for the 
lower grade examples, superstitious vag- 
aries of no reliability, along with the 
credit given the certain higher for superior 
conception of facts, and reliableness in 
communicating them, so as to be of great 
benefit to the race, should not their uni- 
form claim that these facts were im- 
pressed upon them by occupants of the 
celestial state or by the Supreme Being 
directly, as well be admitted? Should 
this superior wisdom and insight be 
deemed faulty in respect to these state- 
ments and not also in the others, unless 
for reasons of very special nature ? Or, 
should such a discrimination be deemed 
possible, were it not well to be left unpro- 
nounced by all of conceded less attain- 
ment ? 

Again, can it be certainly known that 



IOO PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

this higher order of wisdom is the result 
of this extreme temperamental activity 
and high tension seen in epilepsy ? On 
the contrary, is it not more apparent that 
the epilepsy, when occurring in such con- 
nection, is precipitated from predisposi- 
tion thereto, by the impact of the 
overpowering conceptions imparted by 
the very spiritual beings or Being from 
whom these claim to derive them, con- 
ceding that in their selection of human 
instrumentalities account may be made 
of this class of temperaments ? This 
view is also supported by the common 
fact that mental disturbances by external 
visible causes, are frequent occasions of 
such precipitations. 

Then as to the intercourse between the 
higher and lower extremes of capacity, 
which prophecy in its conventional use 
involves, my limits under this head being 
nearly attained, I may only supplement 
what is set forth above in my observations 



MODES OF INTUITION. IOI 

ou the transfer of thought, by stating 
that, as is amply illustrated in human 
affairs, the higher ever excels in means 
over environment, and that there may be 
no end of methods and means known to 
the superiors for such intercourse. But, 
also, this so-called intuition when suffi- 
ciently broadened out over the rational 
intellect, is itself seen to be an all-suffi- 
cient channel. In the light of the obser- 
vations referred to, this intuition may be 
regarded either as the more attained men- 
tal light indifferently falling upon the 
awakened mental eye below, by means 
already pointed out, or as being concen- 
trated with special intention upon a select- 
ed recipient; in which case the phenom- 
enon would be characterized by special 
features and distinctive aims. 

And here again our mineralistic friend, 
Mr. Maudsley, is of service. What 
he saw of this phenomena led him to 
speak of it as an "inspiration," an in- 



102 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

breathing, an attainment without "labored 
reflection" (Ibid). Professor Carpenter 
speaks of it as a "divining power," equiv- 
alent to inspiration, where the thoughts 
drop into vision in their essential whole- 
ness, as tl : e borne to us on the formulas 
of speech over a medium. This is not 
our experience with the body of nature 
direct, whether in the lower or the higher 
altitudes. Nature returns her utterances 
only in response to " labored reflection," 
and by no spontaneity. Only what has 
been in that manner elaborated by self 
has been acquired from the voice of 
nature, whose truths are only by that 
means available in any measure beyond 
external aspects. 

By these recipients, possibly capable of 
apprehending and revealing above the 
level of the world's general attainment, 
transmissions could not be expected with- 
out characterization by limits of capacity 
and by individualisms; often as by a low 



PROPHETS RALSED UP. IO3 

power instrument only outlines are re- 
vealed, or with but few details; or as by 
an instrument imperfectly "corrected," 
the view is colored or broken into eccen- 
tricities. Also, it is to be recalled that by 
the conditions involved by this access to 
the lower, the higher is vested with im- 
portant means to direct and impel the 
recipient towards requisite attainments, in 
full harmony with the claim made that 
prophets are "raised up." 

But whether by "raised up," or the self- 
attained prophets, essential to prophecy 
is the recognition of the superior and 
finally Supreme mentality. Without 
such the thoughts to be so apprehended 
and revealed below could have no exist- 
ence, whether pertaining to the future or 
the present, whether the insight were 
called inspiration or intuition, all would 
be impossible. With no facts to be seen, 
optical instruments, whether of natural or 
artificial development, could reveal noth- 



104 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

ing. And further, if characterized by a 
loving interest in humanity below, this 
community of celestial lives, and the 
Supreme life, would employ prophecy and 
kindred inspirations only as they would 
be needful, which would naturally befall 
more in early ages, when reason and the 
spiritual senses were more feeble; but 
rarely without that completeness which 
would supply light to long ages, if not 
to all time. Less could not well be ex- 
pected from minds equal to such respon- 
sibilities. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SOME REASONS WHY PROPHETIC INCIDENTS ARE 
SO RARELY MET WITH IN PROFANE HISTORY.— 
PRINCIPLES TORE OBSERVED IN DETERMINING- 
PROPHETIC EVENTS. -PHASES OF THE PHE- 
NOMENA. 

The bases of prophecy in the domain of 
nature — the order of nature to which it 
belongs — having been indicated in essen- 
tial fullness and in as much detail as 
could be admitted in a work of the brevity 
and scope of this, the next matter in 
proper order is to note the phenomena in 
exemplification. For the same reasons 
why prophecy was excluded from phil- 
osophy it also might be to a like extent 
excluded from profane historical and 
biographical literature. Still there are 
other reasons, which would however, 
have less weight with the philosopher, 
whose business it is to note the existence 

(105) 



106 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

of principles, uninfluenced by prevailing 
uncertainty of a pure example of it. 

The historian, whose attainments for 
his calling may not have specially quali- 
fied him as a philosopher, may not have 
considered on philosophical grounds; and 
may well have declined the responsibili- 
ty of admitting alleged facts of proph- 
ecy of which neither himself nor his 
authority might have had correct judg- 
ment. He may still further have been 
impressed that the admission of this class 
of statements would, with a people who 
were generally acquainted with the ex- 
treme unreliability which attended upon 
such claims to prophecy, weaken his 
authority with the public as a historian. 
And for similar considerations the one 
not a professional prophet, who would be 
of the safest judgment in such matters, 
might hesitate to testify when convinced 
of a genuine instance, especially if the 
example was to come from his own ex- 



RARE CONDITIONS. 107 

periences. Less, then, than other facts 
would such facts be reported to the his- 
torian, and less than other facts would 
he be likely to give them to the world. 

Besides, while the world is ever full of 
partially developed phenomena of this 
class, in which form they are mainly 
worthless even of notice, well-defined in- 
stances are necessarily rare. When oc- 
curring spontaneously it would be from 
accidental accord of a wide range of con- 
ditions, very rarely befalling. When 
occurring by intelligent appointment, by 
agencies empowered to establish these 
conditions, instances would be expected 
more rare after the pronounced advent of 
the reasoning intelligence in any part of 
the world; and an age of general litera- 
ture would, theiefore, have less of it to 
record, if disposed. With the advance 
of the reasoning powers diminishes the 
necessity of substituting for them. 

Though rare, these phenomena may 



108 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

not be supposed to have been without 
striking examples in even the more 
modern years, and with the very general 
prevalence of reason. An inspection of 
the confidential revelations of their ex- 
perience by some of the -most thoughtful, 
quiet and prudent of cultivated people, 
might be expected to supply incidents of 
which no other theory than of prevision 
would quite as well harmonize with the 
facts in the conditions. 

With all due care, however, on the part 
of one not knowing what conditions are 
essential, error is easily possible; and 
were all the details duly noted, the verdict 
might be quite another in those cases, 
leaving perhaps a small percentage for 
genuine. A very unimportant and feebly 
impressed fact is sometimes the sole sub- 
stance out of which a very brilliant and 
overpowering dream is elaborated by the 
imaginative faculty. So, too, may a very 
light impression of a future probability — 



DISCRIMINATION IMPORTANT. IO9 

an impression directly forgotten, result 
in a very graphic subjective portrayal, 
with details, of an event to transpire, 
when the picture is thus near purely 
subjective and bears no relation with any- 
thing outside of the realm of fancy. 

NEED OF CLOSE DISCRIMINATIONS. 

Also, with the believer there is a lia- 
bility in the presence of an approxima- 
tion of agreement between predictions 
and future transpirings, to overlook ad- 
verse details, which might insensibly lead 
to wrong conclusions; very much after 
the manner in which the unbeliever 
would fail to note, on the other hand, the 
details going to establish the fulfillment of 
a prediction. But, again, the fact of the 
principle of prophecy being admitted, 
might not that slight impression from 
which arose that overpowering realization, 
with sharp details of a future event, be 
itself a truly prophetic impingement? 



IIO PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

And now, to extend still further the 
observations npon these nice discrimina- 
tions, pro and con, to be necessarily at- 
tended to by the nature of this subject. 
From merely the fact of a future, with 
no thought in mind of any particular fact 
in it, a conception of a future fact may 
arise which will be purely imaginary; the 
faculty of the imagination being vested 
with that power in itself, uninfluenced. 
And yet, again, the imagination may also 
be directed from without, as seen. The 
uncertainties attending from these facts 
of the imagination, of course render 
many instances of alleged predictions in- 
solvable by any means now at command. 
We will turn to a few examples only. 
Not long since an Bnglish vessel, the 
Kapunda, by English reports, left Ply- 
mouth for Australia. Against the wishes 
of her friends, especially against the 
wishes of her mother, a young woman 
had taken passage. Meanwhile her 



AN OCEAN DISASTER. Ill 

mother had suffered most distressing 
forebodings — had in imagination con- 
tinually seen the ship striking a huge 
rock in mid-ocean and sink; heard the 
shrieks of the despairing victims. At 
last, but a few hours before the sailing of 
the vessel, she fancied herself hearing 
her daughter calling, a O Mother!" A 
telegram was then sent, requesting the 
daughter to return, which she did. The 
vessel was lost and the daughter spared. 
Whether any corresponding disturbance 
of mind was felt by the relatives of any 
of the remaining passengers and the crew 
who were in the same peril, or not, is not 
related. If it was really a premonition, 
it is possible that in this mother only 
were at the time conditions receptive of 
the impression in sufficient distinctness. 
However, solicitude for friends depart- 
ing on long voyages is quite universal 
and often attains to frenzy, with resultant 
picturings of disasters — disasters, too, 



112 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

which do not befall. That the disaster 
was known to have been of the character 
seen by the frenzied mother, would be 
strong evidence of prevision, but still not 
conclusive, as rocks are a very common 
source of marine disaster. But only in a 
contingent sense could the hearing of the 
daughter's voice in the disaster have 
been prophetic ; a sense, which, however, 
often pertains to prophecy ; namely, that 
if she went her voice would be so heard. 
The Bible student will recognize this 
phase with some frequency throughout 
the Scriptures. 

Of the incidents of strong impressions 
of future events which never transpire, 
not often is mention made. To show, 
also, how a non-fulfillment is no neces- 
sary evidence against the prophetic char- 
acter of an impression, I will cite a case 
related to me by a very competent per- 
sonal professional friend, who related it 
in evidence against the prophetic char- 



AN UNFULFILLED PRESENTIMENT. 113 

acter of alleged prophetic impressions. 
But while a verified example proves a 
natural law, an unverified one does not 
disprove it. 

The statement, in substance, was that 
leaving home, in company with his wife, 
on a journey of a month, he was imme- 
diately seized with an indefinable impres- 
sion of impending calamity ; that all 
through the journey, just ahead of him, 
was some painful experience about to 
befall him. Such was its force that if a 
railway or steamboat disaster had be- 
fallen them, or if a letter from home had 
announced that a disaster had visited the 
home circle, it would have occasioned no 
surprise. So persistent and strong was 
the impression, that it materially less- 
ened the anticipated happiness of the 
journey, and was not wholly removed till 
the home was re-entered, to find all had 
been well. 

When, after returning and finding that 



114 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

nothing on the way or at home had gone 
wrong, he made known the impression to 
his wife, having kept it a secret from 
her, and, to the astonishment 'of botL, 
precisely the same forebodings, during 
the same time, had distressed her also. 

So strong and persistent an impression, 
with its occurrence in the two minds at 
the same time,* might confidently be 
assumed to be a trustworthy incident of 
the law of prescience. However, it had 
the character of a purposeless disturb- 
ance, and was without details. It fore- 
shadowed no particular event, and could 
well have been the reflex action of over- 
taxed nerves, taking that form of disor- 
der. Yet it may also, in the main, have 
been genuine, of which the evil foreshad- 
owed was contingent upon probable con- 
ditions which failed, causing the unde- 
fined calamity to have been averted ; 

* For a full discission of tlie principle of the impress- 
ment of two or more minds by the same presenti- 
ments and visions, see my work, " The Consolations of 
Science," Chapter 18. 



FULFILLMENT IN SUBSTANCE. 115 

somewhat on the principle by which the 
English girl referred to did not meet her 
predicted fate, on the supposition that 
the mother's apprehension of it was a 
prevision. 

For the same reason might premoni- 
tions, when genuine, and though giving 
details, fail of fulfillment in any part. 
But that they may also be purely sub- 
jective, renders such little worthy of 
notice till the verification is from the 
future itself. 

A fulfillment in substance, only in 
part harmonizing with the details in the 
impression, with the appearance of alle- 
gory, it may be, is another, and a very 
common characteristic of presciencing, 
in the illustration of which a very befit- 
ting instance is supplied b}^ Mr. James 
N. Pinkerton, M. D., of London, in a pa- 
per on " Sleep and its Phenomena," read 
before the Medical Faculty of Edinburg, 
in 1839. The statement is as follows : 



Il6 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

Erasmus Francisci, 'when a youth, 
once dreamed that a person with a cer- 
tain surname was about to shoot him, but 
was prevented by an aunt of Francisci, 
who snatched the gun out of his hands. 
Next morning the youth jokingly related 
the dream to his aunt, with whom he was 
living. She, however, saw it in a more 
serious light, and begged him to remain 
at home that day, and, as an inducement 
to do so, gave him the key of a closet in 
which she kept fruit. Francisci took 
the key and retired to his room, stop- 
ping, however, on the way, to speak with 
his aunt's servant, who was cleaning two 
guns in a room exactly opposite his own. 
He then entered his room, sat down to 
his desk and commenced writing. In a 
short while, however, he remembered the 
key his aunt had given him, and obeying 
a sudden impulse, he threw aside his 
book, which was at other times a great 
favorite, and proceeded to the closet. 
Scarcely had he left his seat when the 
gun which the servant opposite was 
cleaning, and which, unknown to him, 



HARMONY IN ESSENTIALS. 117 

was double-loaded with bullets for wolf- 
hunting, accidentally went off, and the 
full charge passed through the wall and 
opposite room, in such direction that, 
had Francisci remained sitting, it would 
have passed through his body "(p. 37.) 
In this case the harmony between the 
dream of the boy and what befell on the 
following day was only in essentials. 
The curiously conditioned dream, where- 
of the prevision, if such there was in it, 
as there seems to have been, and was by 
the learned essayist believed to have 
been, necessarily including in its previs- 
ion the events which followed from itself 
being made known, sets forth that a cer- 
tain one had been about to shoot him, 
whether intentionally or accidentally is 
not stated, but was prevented by the aunt 
seizing the gun. The aunt having put 
the boy in communication at will with 
the fruit closet, whereunto he repaired 
from his endangered position in time to 
escape the passing shot, is the only 



Il8 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

respect in which she exercised any influ- 
ence to avert the fatal tendency of the 
gun upon the boy's life. What contin- 
gencies were awaiting the boy's depart- 
ure from the house that day, on which 
the fulfillment of a more literal character 
might have depended, or whether there 
"were any such, is beyond present possi- 
bilities to know. On the supposition 
that the prediction was not dealing with 
any " ifs," but was an unconditional 
statement of the coming facts which 
transpired, the language cannot be al- 
lowed to have meant that the woman 
would really seize the gun ; and, either 
intentionally or unavoidably an exagger- 
ation occurred in the vision. 

That metaphor or allegory might be 
wisely employed by minds in the supe- 
rior state upon those of the inferior, might 
be believed with little difficulty ; but that 
stimulated minds from partially defined 
impressions readily proceed to extrava- 



A WARM ALTERCATION. ' 119 

gant portrayals, is a well-recognized mat- 
ter of fact. And in this fact may be 
found cause sufficient for occurrences of 
this character, in cases where the seer is 
not evidently revealing his prosaic visions 
in poetry. 

Of all ordinary or casual presenti- 
ments like the above, the disparity be- 
tween details of the impression and those 
of fulfillment might well be in this way 
accounted for. And a still better ex- 
ample of the working of this law may be 
seen in a case cited by the same author- 
ity, and in immediate connection with the 
foregoing, as follows : 

A gentleman dreamed that the Devil 
carried him down to the bottom of a coal- 
pit, where he threatened to burn him un- 
less he would agree to give himself up to 
his service. This he refused to do, and 
a very warm altercation followed. He 
was at last allowed to depart upon condi- 
tion of sending down en individual whom 
the Devil named, a worthless character in 



120 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

the neighborhood. A few days after, this 
person was found drowned under circum- 
stances which gave every reason to be- 
lieve that his death had been voluntary. 
An intimation of the fact of the quite 
immediate death of this man, thus named 
to him in his dream, impressed upon 
him, was evidently the extent of previs- 
ion in the matter; assuming that the 
careful Doctor was not mistaken in his 
data. All beyond would have been a 
ready elaboration by the imaginative 
function out of a potent religious senti- 
ment, then very common in the com- 
munity and very acute. 

IMPRESSIONS IN WAKING AND IN SLEEP- 
ING. 

The mother of the English girl, intent 
on a passage to Australia, and also the 
gentleman and wife who were on a vaca- 
tion trip, were all impressed in the wak- 
ing state of the evils which foreboded 



SENSUOUS WAKING. 121 

them. The boy who escaped the fatal 
bullet, and the man who foresaw the doom 
of the worthless neighbor, each received 
his impression in the state of sleep. And 
such is the history of these phenomena 
in all time and with nil people. The 
mind in the waking state, strongly im- 
pressed with the glaring aspects of external 
nature, is less realizing of the thought 
impinging upon it by insensuous routes 
than when in the state of sleep. But no 
sleep is so complete but that some of the 
faculties are sensuously awake. Neither 
is there a wakefulness so complete but 
that the faculties of some functions are 
asleep. Some faculties, of higher func- 
tions, are rarely at full waking on tho. 
sensuous side of being. 

"In these facts may lie the explanation 
why at times presciencing impressions 
are realized in the sleeping state and at 
others in the waking. 

While, then, by the facts brought for- 



122 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

ward in this chapter, plainly there are few 
criteria in sight by which to jndge of the 
genuineness of impressions concerning 
events of the future, such impressions 
being known to be provided for by a cor- 
responding class of natural facts, enlarges 
assurance that where in any case the con- 
ditions are sensibly those required, the 
phenomena may be relied upon as pro- 
phetic of the future; though till the ar- 
rival of the future itself all certainty must 
be deferred. 



CHAPTER X. 

PROPHECY IN PROFANE HISTORY. 

While instances of prophecy are less 
commonly met with in profane history 
than would be if the sentiment and at- 
tainment of the people had enabled them 
to deal more justly with this class of phe- 
nomena, the fact of unusual restriction 
having been placed upon their employ- 
ment by historians, renders what in- 
stances have been admitted especially 
trustworthy. Because of prejudices, 
largely on philosophical grounds referred 
to, as well as from the apparent easy lia- 
bility to honest error and to voluntary 
imposition, which prejudices measurably 
would include genuine instances with the 
spurious, what incidents gained admission 
might be supposed necessarity and spe- 
cially well-founded, or at least fully at par 

(123) 



124 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

with the generally accepted facts of his- 
tory. 

To the few examples above submitted 
in illustration of the several phases oc- 
curring, there is room for but few more to 
be added out of, comparatively speaking, 
the considerable list at hand, taken from 
profane records. Of impressions of pro- 
phetic character and akin to prophecy, 
not specially well defined, we might turn 
to a quite surprisingly large number, well 
authenticated. Columbus, in the later 
years of his life, firmly believed himself 
to have been moved so persistently after 
his life's studies and project, by an influ- 
ence much stronger and more determined 
than could be accounted for by consider- 
ing merely the craving of his own strong 
intellect and passions, and that he had 
proceeded under the direction of a divine 
commission. Though perhaps not im- 
pressed upon him as such, yet if this im- 
pression which he realized was a verity, 



c^esar's presentiment. 125 

his future probably had beeu prescienced 
by an inspiring agent. Josephine, in the 
midst of the revolution, and when the 
general tendency of France was toward a 
republic, and before she had seen Napo- 
leon, and before Napoleon had any dis- 
tinction, was definitely impressed that she 
would be queen of the French, and that 
somehow her life would be spared from 
the guillotine which faced her. 

Of the ominous impressions which so 
deeply disturbed the minds of Csesar and 
Calphurnia on the night and morning 
preceding his tragical death, all history- 
reading people know. The alleged fact 
of the extraordinary disturbance is not 
disputed, and stands as part of the oc- 
currences of that fateful day. Froude, in 
his " Caesar : A Sketch," has well sum- 
med the essentials of these impressions 
and their co-incidents, in the following 
extract : 

"The same evening, the 14th of March, 



126 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

Caesar was at a L,ast Supper at the house 
of Ivepidus. The conversatiou turned o i 
the kind of death which was most to b : 
desired. Caesar, who was signing papers 
while the rest were talking, looked up 
and said, ' A sudden one.' When great 
men die, the imagination insists that all 
nature shall have felt the shock. Strange 
stories were told in after years of the un- 
easy labors of the elements that night. 

"The armor of Mars, which stood in 
the hall of the Pontifical Palace, crashed 
down upon the pavement. The door of 
Caesar's room new open. Calphurnia 
dreamt her husband was murdered, and 
that she saw him ascending into heaven, 
and received by the hand of God. In the 
morning the sacrifices were again unfa- 
vorable. Caesar was restless. Some nat- 
ural disorder affected his spirits, and his 
spirits were reacting upon his body. Con- 
trary to his usual habit he gave way to 
depression. He decided, at his wife's en- 
treaty, that he would not attend the Sen- 
ate that day. 



C^SAR IMPRESSED. 1 27 

"The house was full. The conspira- 
tors were in their places, with their dag- 
gers ready. Attendants came to remove 
Caesar's chair. It was announced that he 
was not coming. Delay might be fatal. 
A day's respite and all might be discov- 
ered. His familiar friend, whom he 
trusted — the coincidence is striking — was 
employed to betray him. Decimus Bru- 
tus, whom it was impossible for him to 
distrust, went to entreat his attendance, 
giving reasons to which he knew Caesar 
would listen, unless the plot had been 
actually betrayed. It was now eleven in 
the forenoon. Caesar shook off his un- 
easiness and arose to go. As he crossed 
the hall, his statue fell and shivered on the 
stones. Some servant, perhaps, had heard 
whispers and wished to warn him. As he 
still passed on, a stranger thrust a scroll 
into his hand, and begged him to read it 
on the spot. It contained a list of the 
conspirators, with a clear account of the 
plot. He supposed it to be a petition, and 
placed it carelessly among his other pa- 
pers." 



128 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

Further details are given by other 
writers. Caesar's deportment was unus- 
ual, and himself avers that Calphurnia's 
was, ordinarily having but little of the 
timidity which characterizes her sex. It 
is claimed that he was made apprehensive 
of the plot, — that, indeed, he had been 
warned of it by authorities which he 
could not wholly disregard. But this 
could weigh but little when recalling that 
to dangers of that character sovereigns 
are, even in our day, very commonly ex- 
posed, and that rumors of this character 
could have been no new matter with 
Caesar. Besides, just then the state ap- 
pointments had all been made for the 
next five years, under terms of seemingly 
general satisfaction; and the magnates 
were in a fortnight expected to be sepa- 
rated off to their several charges. 

Besides, Caesar was too much of a gen- 
eral to omit the investigation of any 
trouble of the character, foreshadowed by 



IDES OF MARCH. 1 2 9 

any external testimony. And the pre- 
sumption must be, all things duly con- 
sidered, that Csesar's concern of mind was 
not founded upon any apprehensions of 
the plot by any external evidence — that 
in civil affairs by him there was no more 
than the usual danger seen, to which a 
high official accustoms himself. He took 
no precautionary measures, and was 
wholly surprised when the blow fell. 
What apprehension he suffered from was 
vague, a vision of no detail, yet the evil 
was evidently to befall during the day, if 
at all. The "Ides of March" was the 
time, and the impression pointed to that 

day. 

From the standpoint that prophecy is a 
matter of nature incident to mind, the 
event of the day foreseen by the related 
mind or minds in the superior adjacent 
world, would likely be impressed measur- 
ably, as to character and date, on avail- 
able minds in inferior conditions. Mind 



130 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

in the superior state, discerning the trag- 
ic event of such great local and general 
importance, might well contemplate it 
with a tension of interest which would 
penetrate unusually far and with unusual 
force into adjacent minds, involving the 
mind of Cassar and of others sufficiently 
to excite the strange, undefined alarm 
which oppressed them. The impression 
might, then, also have been with or 
without any purpose to impress the mind 
of the great Roman — "the foremost man 
of all the world." 

An incident in connection with the ac- 
cession of Diocletian to the throne of im- 
perial Rome, may be still further cited. 
When a soldier, of no very high rank, 
with the imperial army of Gaul, his le- 
gion was cantoned in Belgica. On set- 
tling his account with his hostess with 
whom he had lodgings, she reproached 
him for want of liberality. He answered, 
laughingly, "I'll be prodigal when I am 



ARRIUS APER. 131 

emperor." The woman, a Druid ess, 
and reputed of a prophetic faculty, re- 
sponded : " Laugh not. Thou shalt be 
emperor when thou hast slain a wild 
boar" (aper). In hunting expeditions 
he often slew boars. But others arose 
over him to the throne, vacated in rapid 
succession in those days. Numerian 
coming to the throne was assassinated, 
and the crime was charged upon his 
father : in-law, a Praetorian praefect, hap- 
pening to bear the name of Arrius Aper. 
Diocletian had grown popular and was 
offered for election to the vacant throne. 
On presenting himself he was questioned 
concerning the death of Numerian. He 
replied that he was not guilty himself, 
but knew who was, and that he would 
find a way for his punishment, then 
rushed upon Aper and slew him. In the 
evening he remarked to his confidants : 
" I have killed the prophetic wild boar." 
In spite of strong rivals he was soon aft- 
erward elected emperor. 



132 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

This simple account, for which the dis- 
tinguished French historian Guizot is the 
authority here referred to, presents the 
following strong points : The woman, a 
priestess of the Druids, probably, was 
known to foretell events. That she knew 
of Aper is barely possible. That his 
death could lead to the throne was wholly 
beyond the ordinary human means of 
knowing ; and but for the accident of his 
crime, not yet committed nor plotted (his 
son-in-law was not yet emperor) , his death 
by Diocletian, or by any one else, could 
hardly have contributed to the choice of 
an emperor. Between the details of the 
prediction, which were very striking and 
extraordinary, and the details of the in- 
coming events, there was an exact agree- 
ment. These facts, easily explained by 
the natural laws of prophecy, and other- 
wise remaining unaccountable, supply a 
remarkably well-defined instance of pre- 
vision from the profane source. It may, 



MAID OF ORLEANS. 1 33 

also, supply an instance showing that the 
phenomena, in considerable brilliance, 
may befall in the midst of circumstances 
of little general mental or moral ele- 
vation. 

Among the most conspicuous instances 
of prophecy to be cited from profane his- 
tory is the career of Joan of Arc — the 
Maid of Orleans. The importance cf her 
case in this connection is, however, not so 
much on account of the number and 
striking instances of her particular pre- 
dictions and their fulfillment, as her won- 
derful intuitional powers in apprehend- 
ing the facts of the present. Joan was 
born in the obscure village of Domremy, 
in the extreme northeast of France, in 
the early part of the 15th century. She 
was without an education sufficient to 
write her name, a shepherd girl in the 
employment of her shepherd father ; very 
poor, very obscure, and very much cur- 
tailed in her means of knowledge; un- 



134 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

less, as has been suggested, that m addi- 
tion to his little estate her father pro- 
vided some inn accommodations, from 
which source some general knowledge 
might have been obtained of the outside 
world, and particularly of France, then so 
distracted by war with invading England, 
which already held much of the French 
territory, and directly or indirectly many 
of the strongholds of France, and was 
beseiging Orleans, while the timid Dau- 
phin, in despair of his kingdom, was 
meditating flight from the country. 

The Maid began to hear voices from 
the invisible side of nature, calling her 
to take the direction of the military. 
These voices were, she claimed, of celes- 
tial origin, and the utterances of venera- 
ble saints ; mainly Saints Catherine and 
Margaret. The mission to which they 
called her extended only to raising the 
seige of Orleans and thence to lead the 
Dauphin to Rheims for coronation. This 



MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. 1 35 

would, however, virtually end the con- 
tests in favor of France. This, by the 
assurance of the voices, she predicted 
that she would accomplish. But this was 
a task from which the great generals of 
the French were shrinking. In a little 
more than six months from taking the 
command at Blois the specified mission 
was all accomplished — the English were 
driven from Orleans, the march to 
Rheims (largely through a region of the 
country strongly fortified by the enemy, 
and by a succession of hard-fought bat- 
tles) was made, and the crown placed on 
the head of the Dauphin as Charles 
VII. 

Many miraculous achievements and in- 
cidents would be alleged of such a person 
in such an age and by such a people. 
Still, it is to be remembered that certain 
circumstances then present would have 
successfully conspired to keep out of 
standard history what was without due 



136 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

foundation in fact. While the people, 
including the soldiery in general, were 
unsparing in their belief in the supernat- 
ural mission and endowment of the Maid, 
and while her examiners, consisting 
largely of the sober, sturdy learning of 
France, recommended her commission on 
the same ground, the higher military and 
the government were not a unit in that 
opinion, while still according her the abil- 
ity and integrity justifying the appoint- 
ment. It is, then, extremely certain that 
official records, the chief source of historic 
data, contain no incidents of the charac- 
ter of prophecy and intuition, pertaining 
to the Maid, but those which may with 
entire safety be believed. 

As to her integrity in all that she 
claimed, if the long, severe examination 
by the ablest men and women of the 
time, and from all standpoints of view, as 
to her fitness for the command, left any 
room for doubt, no doubt could remain 



THE MAID'S INTEGRITY. I37 

after having seen her life in the cam- 
paign and during the excruciating trial 
by her enemies, preparatory to burning 
her at the stake. Through all, her alle- 
gations as to her divine appointment were 
the same ; and her unswerving faith in it 
and her utterly meek obedience to it, were 
the same. In this regard the sacred rec- 
ords themselves contain allusion to but 
few superiors. One of her judges, after 
the flames had done their work, in dejec- 
tion remarked: 

"Would that my soul were where I be- 
lieve the soul of that woman is!" 

Upon this remarks the historian Gui- 
zot: 

"Never was human creature more hero- 
ically confident in and devoted to inspira- 
tion coming from God. Joan of Arc 
sought nothing of all that happened to 
her and of all that she did, nor exploit, 
nor power, nor glory" (History of 
France, Guizot: Vol. II. pp. 364, 365. 
London, 1881). 



138 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

She is, then, to be taken at her word, 
so uniformly given, that she heard voices — 
that the authority for her conduct was the 
voices. The psychologist might, without 
detriment to the illustration supplied by 
the example, qualify that she realized 
voices, but not necessarily by the organs 
of the oral sense. However that may be, 
the judgment conveyed to the mind of 
the Maid was of the superior order that 
made her, inexperienced and untaught in 
that science, and by nature disinclined to 
it, in military matters the superior of the 
French marshals. Mr. Hume, the leader 
of the skeptic school of his time, to parry 
the force of the fact of this superiority, 
under the circumstances tending to fall 
disastrously on his cherished principles of 
unbelief in the unseen or spiritual side of 
being, theorizes that shrewd French gen- 
erals, seeing in her a means of un- 
bounded enthusiasm in the French army 
and people, seemed to allow her to have 



HUME'S CRITICISM. 1 39 

leadership ; that she was so talented that 
she could see what they wished and 
adopted it ; that she could distinguish 
those persons on whose judgment she 
could rely, etc. But it must be doubtful 
whether to this great philosophic mind 
itself this subterfuge was satisfying, and 
that he saw not after it the inevitable 
question of how an uneducated, inexpe- 
rienced peasant shepherdess of nineteen 
summers could distinguish important 
military hints, and between the merits of 
great military men? and if she did so 
distinguish, what need she had of their 
gifts and acquirements in directing the 
command over which she was placed ? 
Mr. Hume objected to miracles ; but 
what miracle excels that of such defect- 
ive reasoning by such a competent mind? 

Much better is the sentiment of Prof. 
Creasy, also one of England's historians, 
and one of no less merit : 

<l If any person can be found in the pres- 



140 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

ent age who would join in the scoffs of 
Voltaire against the Maid of Orleans and 
the Heavenly Voices by which she be- 
lieved herself inspired, let him read the 
life of the wisest and best man that the 
heathen nations produced. Let him read 
of the Heavenly Voices by which Socra- 
tes believed himself to be constantly at- 
tended ; which cautioned him on his way 
from the field of battle at Delium, and 
which, from his boyhood to the time of 
his death, visited him with unearthly 
warnings. Let the modern reader reflect 
upon this ; and then, unless he is pre- 
pared to term Socrates either a fool or an 
impostor, let him not dare to deride or 
vilify Joan of Arc " (Fifteen Decisive 
Battles) . 

Her prophetic utterances were, as au- 
thentically reported, mainly concerning 
the accomplishment of her avowed mis- 
sion ending with the crowning of the 
young king. There was, however, detail 
enough in respect to them, and their ac- 
cord with what transpired was so complete 



EVENTS PRESCIENCED. 141 

that, till the alleged historic facts are re- 
futed, this uniform impression upon her 
to accomplish what she did, is to be taken 
only as, directly or by proxy, a forcible 
and very distinct discernment of the future. 
A few of her local predictions may also 
be noted. On her way with her train to 
Chinon to be presented to the Dauphin, 
a ruffian man-at-arms accosted her with 
profane and vile observations. " Alas ! " 
she replied, " thou blasphemest thy God 
and yet art so near thy death ! " He was 
soon afterward drowned. In the progress 
of the operations for the relief of Or- 
leans, the English still held the strongest 
of all their positions, the Bastile des 
Tounelles. To at once storm this fort 
was the determination of the Maid. On 
the other hand, her generals looked upon 
the immediate undertaking as rash and 
madness, and sought to dissuade her. To 
divert her, a delicate dinner was pre- 
pared and presented. She replied : 



142 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

" In the name of God, it shall not be 
eaten till supper, by which time we will 
return by way of the bridge, and bring 
back with us, as a prisoner, an English- 
man who shall eat his share of it." 

So saying, she led the way to the at- 
tack ; and after a day's terrible series of 
assaults,' herself wounded, the English 
were dislodged, and before night the 
Maid and her troops re-entered the city by 
way of the long-coveted bridge, and in 
literal fulfillment of her prediction of the 
previous morning. 

Of similar instances of casual predic- 
tions, of the fulfillment of which no 
reasons were in view, and yet which 
were in like manner fulfilled, the list 
could be quite prolonged. However, fur- 
ther citations are not required. But to 
one feature more of this psychological 
endowment of the Maid, a single exam- 
ple of its phenomena, it is proper to give 
place. Like most people of the gift of 



THE DAUPHIN'S PRAYER. 143 

prescience in special measures, Joan read 
extensively the unspoken thought of the 
minds surrounding her. An instance is 
in the case of the Dauphin himself, at 
Chinon, shortly after her first interview 
with him, and when he was still quite 
skeptical in respect to her. The English 
were gaining, and the gloom of despair 
was settling heavily upon him. The 
Dauphin related to Sire de Boisy, his 
gentleman-of-the-bed-chamber, that during 
this depression of spirits he entered one 
morning alone into his oratory, " and 
there, without uttering a word aloud, 
made prayer to God from the depth of 
his heart that, if he were the true heir 
and issue of the House of France, and 
the kingdom ought justly to be his, God 
would be pleased to keep and defend it 
for him ; if not, to give him grace to 
escape without death or imprisonment, 
and find safety in Spain or in Scotland, 
where he intended in the last resort to 



144 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

seek a refuge." This prayer, thus ut- 
tered ouly iu mind, and when secluded 
away by himself, the Maid, as a proof of 
her gift and mission, recalled to the 
Dauphin. It was his conversion. He 
threw away his doubts from that mo- 
ment, and enlisted his royal patronage in 
her favor. 

The incident recalls to mind the young 
Hebrew prophet Daniel standing before 
Nebuchadnezzar, and there detailing to 
him the dream which had passed through 
the monarch's mind, and was there left 
uncommunicated to any one. And in 
another respect are the incidents in 
strong resemblance: The Maid alleged 
her knowledge of the prayer to have 
been derived from the voices of holy ones 
in the unseen state ; Daniel prefaced the 
unfolding of the dream by informing the 
king that, " There is a God in heaven 
that revealeth secrets." The incidents 
lie twenty centuries apart, befell in differ- 



DIFFERING IN MEASURES. 145 

ent nationalities and widely different con- 
ditions, but represent the same law, and 
essentially are the same phenomena; 
due, however, to agencies and motives 
on greatly differing levels ; and as repre- 
sentatives of the phenomena with which 
they are classed, they differ in perverting 
accretions as the diamond differs in bort 
and in brilliant. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE PHENOMENA IN SACRED HISTORY.-THE TERM 
PROPHECY IN THE BIBLE NOT RESTRICTED TO 
PREDICTION-CHARACTERISTICS OF PROPHETS. 

In proceeding to consider the phenomena 
of prophecy in sacred history separately 
from those in profane, no distinction is 
seen in the nature of those which appear 
recorded there and those which the pro- 
fane record sets forth. It is not apparent, 
moreover, that in the one place they are 
better attested than in the other. While 
more largely appearing on the sacred 
page, the reason may not be that the 
sacred writers were less careful and com- 
petent, but that in connection with the 
people of whom they recorded the phe- 
nomena were more plentiful and more 
pronounced. 

While in nature the same, that is, 

(146) 



BIBLE PROPHECIES. 147 

while resulting, as phenomena, from the 
same general conditions and laws, it is 
to be seen that of those in sacred history- 
there was a characterization by stronger 
and broader thought. The series for the 
most part contains a common principle 
and purpose, from first to last, denoting a 
much higher level of mind as the agency, 
and a much larger control over the 
human subjects selected as instruments. 
In these regards comprising all essentials, 
the comparison, with few exceptions, 
utterly dwarfs the phenomena found in 
the profane records. 

THE TERM PROPHECY NOT RESTRICTED 
TO PREDICTION. 

But the phenomena under the head of 
prophecy in the Bible are in the smallest 
and least important part presented when 
only those pertaining to the foretelling of 
events are set forth. The specially un- 
veiled present, the intuitive apprehension 



I48 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

of truths for the inductive processes of 
which he may not have had the capacity, 
— these were the chief function of the 
Bible prophet. The agency from the 
superior levels of mind, by the same 
capacity which was sufficient to unveil the 
future, might well supply extraordinary 
insight into the present to capacities too 
limited to inductively execute this knowl- 
edge. It has already been remarked that 
to perceive a truth, a result of mental 
process, a capacity of mind may be suffi- 
cient which would be very insufficient to 
comprehend the processes themselves. 

The Bible prophets, generally evincing 
intellect much above the level of their 
times, in their prophetic capacity, as a 
rule, dealt only with results of mental 
processes. The processes by which their 
facts were reached, if they themselves 
knew them, they did not submit to the 
people. The inference they, however, 
left was that they were themselves un- 



the prophet's function. 149 

acquainted with the processes, but spoke 
on the authority of some one else. They 
did not customarily say, "this is true, for 
such and such reasons." They did not 
even say it as their own saying, but as 
the Jehovah's: "Thus saith the Jeho- 
vah." And Moses, for varying too largely 
from this rule, was severely punished by 
being denied entrance to the land of 
promise. 

These enunciations of wisdom were the 
prophet's function and calling; though 
now and then graphically detailing the 
future. And so did the people under- 
stand their function to be. "Prophesy, 
who is it that smote thee?" (Luke xxii. 
64) said the persecuting rabble to Jesus; 
ironically alluding to the prophet's func- 
tion which was alleged of him. The 
Jehovah commanded Ezekiel to prophesy 
to the wind; and in obedience to the com- 
mand the prophet addressed the wind in 
the following mandatory words: "Thus 



150 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

saith the Jehovah God; come from the 
four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 
these slain that they may live" (Ezek. 
xxxvii. 9 ). While the import was a pre- 
diction, issuing the Divine command was 
prophesying, and is an instance of one 
form of the biblical use of the term 
prophecy. Paul couples with the calling 
of the prophet the work of the general 
verbal ministry of the gospel, "edification 
and exhortation and comfort" (I Cor. 
xiv. 3 ). Sanballat accused Nehemiah of 
having appointed prophets to preach in 
Jerusalem and to proclaim him king 
(Neh. vi. 7), which could not have been 
consistent if preaching was not a recog- 
nized calling of the prophet. 

Very much the most important prophet 
to the world before the age of Christ was 
Moses (Deut. xviii. 15-19; Acts iii. 22), 
from whom emanated that formula of 
religion, morals, hygiene, and civil law, 
which, with little doubt, has entered into 



THE PROPHETIC FUNCTION. 151 

the basis, directly or indirectly, of all 
important civilizations from his day to 
our era. But his prophetic ministry was 
characterized by only few predictions; and 
none very specially marked for fullness 
and distinctness of detail. Also, what 
was thus true of the prophetic gift of 
Moses may be remarked to have been in 
a large measure true of that of others of 
the more distinguished prophets. Of 
Nathan, Elijah and Hlisha few instances 
of prediction are related ; but that they 
did much healthful preaching, exhorting, 
warning, comforting, and occasional won- 
der-working, with intense earnestness, 
and only claiming for themselves in these 
the part of instruments in the hands of 
the Deity. 

EXAMPLES IN PREDICTIONS. 

Predictions were, however, very much 
the most common, and also very much 
the most remarkable with the Bible 



152 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

prophets, of all on reliable records. For 
a few examples only is there room. 
These, too, we will not dogmatize upon, 
nor in any way undertake in respect to 
them the part of the theologian. Many 
prophecies here, as elsewhere, while in- 
trinsically evidencing that they are pre- 
dictive prophecies, are enough lacking in 
detail to admit of ambiguity, more or less; 
and are hence liable to some variability 
in application. This is all the more pos- 
sible from the general absence of dates, — 
a difficulty generally encountered in all 
literature of the ages represented in the 
Bible. These difficulties, however, are 
not generally unsurmountable. The 
science of history can commonly here as 
elsewhere supply the means of essential 
accuracy. And what in the present is 
lacking in this respect further time will 
supply, where sufficient data in the 
prophecy itself exist for a verification to 
be possible. 



COLORINGS TO PREDICTIONS. 1 53 

Predictions of the Messiah are sup- 
posed to be quite numerous in the Old 
Testament. With the impression quite 
universal among that people that in the 
later times such a divinely endowed per- 
son should appear in the world, the more 
ordinary prophetic minds might have 
modified, frequently, predictive messages, 
indistinctly impressed, and largely sup- 
plemented them with unconscious color- 
ings from this general expectation, when 
the real reference might have been to a 
matter of quite different character. The 
reader, too, of the prediction, out of the 
supposition that a Messiah was to come, 
or, as in the case of the Christian reader, 
had already come, might by anticipation 
misjudge the prophet to have had refer- 
ence to that event. On the other hand, 
also, the Messiah, as recognized in Jesus, 
having been a future fact of universal 
and immeasurable importance to the race, 
frequent and strong allusions to him 



154 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

would Hardly fail to have been made from 
time to time through these channels of 
inspiration. 

Among the earliest supposed prophetic 
references to Christ, we may notice the 
statement by the messenger from heaven 
to Abraham: "In thy seed shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 
xxii. 18). That this blessing extended 
beyond the limits of the descendency of 
Abraham, is made plain by the terms of 
the statement. Ife was to be inclusive of 
the whole race, and especially distin- 
guished above ordinary important events. 
And as Abraham himself, and other 
worthies, might in general terms be con- 
sidered a blessing to all nations, little 
meaning could attach to the statement if 
not a being distinguished above the gen- 
eral level of great and good men — sub- 
stantially as Christ — was intended. To 
Isaac and Jacob, successively, was the 
same statement made, from the same 



THE MESSIAH PREDICTED. 155 

source. No details are given, but to say 
the least, there is a most remarkable coin- 
cidence between this often-repeated state- 
ment to these patriarchs, and the fact that 
Jesus, their son, in the remote generations 
was a blessing to universal humanity in 
a magnitude and sense unapproachable. 

Another example is supplied in the 
prediction by Moses referring to a distin- 
guished incoming prophet in later ages: 

"The Lord said unto me: 'I will 
raise them up a prophet from among their 
brethren, like unto thee, and will put my 
words in his mouth; and he shall speak 
unto them all that I shall command 
him'" (Deut. xviii. 15-19). 

Prophets, though not plentiful, were in 
long periods of time somewhat numerous, 
and in considerable part men of great in- 
fluence extending over all ranks of life. 
But taking the greatest in considerable 
groups, their summits were about level; 
and none could be singled out into dis- 
tinction over others. The "a prophet," 



156 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

in the illumined mind of Moses could 
therefore not be applied to any of the 
spiritual celebrities of the Old Testament 
canon. There is but one prophet which 
could by any means be inferred — the one 
overshadowing all others, and indicated to 
the patriarchs. 

In the fifty-third chapter of his prophe- 
cies, Isaiah makes a graphic allusion to a 
very marked character arising in the field 
of his prophetic vision, of whom he pre- 
sents considerable detail. As usual, date 
is omitted; and no mention is made of 
place. But the stock is distinctly inferred 
to be Jewish. In some respects the allu- 
sion would be befitting Jeremiah, only a 
century later. For the faithful discharge 
of the duties of his prophetic office, ad- 
monishing his people of their sins and of 
the appalling disasters which would fol- 
low a persistence in them, and after bitter 
persecutions, he was seized and thrown 
into a vile prison. These afflictions he 



THE MESSIAH PREDICTED. 1 57 

bore weepingly, but with no form of re- 
sentment, while still faithfully continuing 
to admonish and entreat. The prophetic 
Isaiah could well, in these respects, have 
alluded to him in the terms of his pro- 
phecy : 

"He is despised and rejected of men; a 
man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief; and we hid as it were our faces from 
him . . . He hath borne our griefs and car- 
ried our sorrows . . . He was oppressed, and 
he was afflicted, yet he opened not his 
mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the 
slaughter, and as a sheep before her 
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his 
mouth. " 

While in a large measure these experi- 
ences and traits were common with the 
more notable prophets, in Jeremiah they 
were more pronounced. But here, after 
having gone but a short way, the analogy 
discontinues ; and with so much wanting, 
it could not have been Jeremiah whom 
the vision contemplated ; and hence, too, 



158 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

none out of the list of the Old Testament 
canon. But centuries beyond the canon 
there came one out of a neglected and al- 
most forgotten royal line — "a root out of 
a dry ground" — without pageant and 
without attractive insignia, encountering 
and denouncing the sins of the people, 
first of all those of his own national 
brethren. In lamentations he wept over 
their apostasy and the unparalleled woes 
into which it was leading them forth. 
More deeply, too, than ordinary man did 
the sorrow incident to human life on all 
levels, impress him. Never had the ig- 
norant and forgotten poor been made to 
know such interest in their behalf. Lep- 
rous of flesh or leprous of soul, none ever 
cried to him in vain. The noonday meal 
to depleted nature presented no refresh- 
ment to him while a despised woman of a 
despised race was growing happy and 
strong and good from his nourishing 
words. And among the stations and call- 



THE MESSIAH PREDICTED. 1 59 

ings which elicit desire, none rivalled the 
path to sorrow's door. To what greater 
depth the impressions of human sorrow 
extended in his soul, and how heavy 
human iniquities laid upon his heart, 
those of less love may, to be sure, never 
fully estimate. But human sorrow-bear- 
ing, it may be safely said, attained in no 
other instance to such breadth and in- 
tensity. 

Before his persecutors he, for the most 
part, instituted no self-defense. "He 
opened not his mouth." From the "judg- 
ment-hall he was led to the execution. 
"He was taken from prison and from 
judgment — he was cut off out of the land 
of the living." He was crucified with 
thieves, and the rich merchant placed his 
remains in his own tomb. "He made his 
grave with the wicked and with the rich 
in his death." "And he was numbered 
with the transgressors." 

Throughout, with no violence to the 



l6o PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

plain sense, the analogy is equally full 
and striking. It is like lines of closing 
reflections by a biographer, after having 
categorically detailed the events of his 
life and death. It is as if the prophet had 
annihilated the intervening time and 
stood spectator of the scene. 

Standing down in the New Testament 
age, it is seen a large extent of time to 
the age of Old Testament prophets. 
During that time, Plato and Aristotle had 
given rise to the Greek philosophy, and 
their school had sown it over the civilized 
world. Its stimulant had been operating 
on the general mind for more than three 
centuries, and the reflective thought of 
the world was necessarily much enlarged ; 
so that we would expect to find in that 
greatly more modern day, in the prophe- 
cy of Jesus and the Apostles much less 
of prediction. It was, however, not want- 
ing, though the examples to be submit- 
ted must also be few. Predictive prophe- 



JESUS' PREDICTIONS. l6l 

cy will be recalled in connection with the 
conception and nativity of Jesus. Devout 
Simeon was impressed by the Spirit that 
before his death it should be granted to 
him to see the Christ ; and accordingly he 
was brought to the temple by the Spirit at 
the time the babe was presented for cir- 
cumcision. At the baptism John predicted 
very earnestly that Jesus should take 
away the sin of the world, which could 
not have been justified without a distinct 
perception of the existence of the future 
fact named. 

Jesus spoke of the coming end of the 
Jewish polity, and of the incidental mani- 
fold bitter calamity to the people, with all 
the familiarity with which one speaks of 
an event of the near past. The utter 
razure of the temple he distinctly pointed 
out to his disciples, and fixed the event to 
be within the life-time of that generation, 
and referred to the evangelist John as one 
who would survive it ; all of which, with- 



1 62 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

in the specified time, became a matter of 
history; and of which in the time of the 
predictions there was no visible indication 
— nothing occurring but the usual unrest 
and uneven allegiance of people in sub- 
jection to a foreign power. Later on, the 
apostles made forceful allusions to the 
same events ; but while probably at times 
from inspiration afresh, they may have 
been the Master's predictions restated. 
Agabus, however, one of the disciples — 
of the seventy, possibly — about the year 
41, arose in a Christian assembly and pre- 
dicted "that there should be a great 
dearth throughout all the world " (Acts 
xi. 28 ). This, the apostle remarked, did 
befall in the reign of Claudius, upon 
which they had just entered. General 
confidence in the prediction was felt by 
the church; and the great famine over 
the whole Roman Empire in the reign of 
this monarch is especially noted in 
history, and supplies an important in- 



CASUAL INSPIRATION. 163 

stance of prescience in one of the less 
noted of the disciples of Jesus. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF PROPHETS. 

From this discussion it is recalled that 
to be available for some measure of in- 
spiration it is not indispensable that one 
be of the largest capacity or of the best 
quality of life. Inspiration, in the fee- 
bler measures, may occur from casual 
conjunction of psychological conditions 
wherein there is no purpose directing it 
to the recipient. Such an impression 
would be more feeble, or more feebly real- 
ized, when thus lacking the stimulant 
which a direct address awakens. The 
tendency, however, on the part of the in- 
telligent inspiring mind, would be to- 
ward the selection of the highest com- 
bination of the essential qualities; freed, 
also, to the utmost extent possible from 
impeding or perverting accretions. 

In harmony with this are the facts with 



164 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

respect to prophets. History supplies no 
record of a class of men superior to the 
recognized superiors in prophecy, com* 
bining, in the highest manner and with 
the fullest measures, those most ad- 
mirable traits of self-denial, integrity, 
moral purity, and submissiveness to 
Divine will. The seeming lack of 
charity, at times displayed, was not neces- 
sarily a real lack of that most excellent 
gift, but a result of a superior sense of 
beneficent duty, and was indirectly the 
achievement of an extreme charity. By 
their function related with the Deity in 
implicit obedience to Him, personal favor 
by them was contingent on the Divine 
will alone, to which the king was no more 
accessible than the subject. This ex- 
plains that well-known supremacy of the 
prophet over all classes of lives. The 
countenance of the greatest Jewish mon- 
arch fell before that of Nathan, who so 
ingenuously snared the guilty man. The 



THE SUPREME NEED. 1 65 

infuriated Ahab quailed under the eye of 
Elijah, when that prophet, conscious of 
the Divine command, confronted him 
with his disastrous idolatries. 

It, too, is to be remembered that these 
were but men, of no hereditary title or 
human election, — ^the kindred of common 
mankind, and that a general enlargement 
of the sense of obligation to God would 
correspondingly enlarge and beautify the 
general manhood of the human race; and 
that for this reform, the basis of all 
others, is the better day yearned for in 
waiting. 



CHAPTER XII. 

HISTORY A SCIENCE—FOSSIL LITERATURE -ON- 
TOLOGICAL OUTLOOK-CONCLUDING REFLEC- 
TIONS, 

The course of this discussion, which is 
now essentially completed according to 
the design, required phenomena needful 
for corroboration which history alone 
could supply. How far such evidence 
will go when assuming to deal with exact 
truths, will depend on the aptness to be- 
lieve in the competence and candor of the 
historians. History is a verbal bridge 
over time from one set of senses to 
another, and its reliability is measured, 
other things being equal, by the length 
of time in the span. As in other things 
people are credited with reliableness ac- 
cording to their known efficiency, so 
historians of unequal skill and integrity 
in weighing evidence must differ in the 

(166) 



TIME AN OBSTACLE. 1 67 

value of their authority. There is then 
a science of history needed, by which 
events of the past can be utilized, in a 
sense independently of conventional his- 
torians, by which the reliableness of the 
historian may be ascertained, and by 
which his facts, if true, may be fully 
verified and made matters of realization, 
substantially as present facts whereof the 
obstacle of time is eliminated. 

But as strictly there is no present of 
appreciable magnitude, and what we call 
so is but where past and future limit each 
other, so also there are no truly present 
facts, and what we call so are of the near 
future or past or in part of each. The 
reason why what we call present facts are 
more satisfying than what we call past 
facts or facts of history, is that of the 
latter fewer of the corroborative incidents 
are retained in sensuous consciousness. 
Perhaps neither the feet itself nor any of 
its coincidences is contemporary with 



1 68 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

any of our senses; and the sense evi- 
dence that we have of it is, it may be, see- 
ing its statement made by another, who 
in turn derived it in the same manner. 
But contemporary facts often we have 
access to only by the same second-hand 
means. Now, it is plain that the realiza- 
tion of such as verities is in each case de- 
pending on the mental sense apprehen- 
sion of the integrity and competence of 
the chain of transfer — it may be long or 
short. And, after all, the length of the 
chain, in authorities or in years, has less 
to do with it than may be seeming. The 
alleged fact of yesterday may be less cred- 
ible than the one of an hundred years ago, 
from the fact that the one relating of yes- 
terday may be lacking the essentials of a 
true narrator more than the one reporting 
of an hundred years ago. 

HISTORY A SCIENCE. 

Further still, in relation to verification 
of alleged past facts present natural facts 



HISTORIC SCIENCE. 1 69 

may be of the most serviceable character, 
having the power to satisfy quite equally 
with an ocular presence. A man leads 
a matured horse before me as proof that 
some years before a colt existed. The 
presence of that particular horse satisfies 
me of the existence of the colt as much 
as if the colt were before me. The past 
fact would be as real as the horse itself, 
unless agnostically I would assume that 
it was not knowable that in that instance 
it was necessary that the horse should 
once have been a colt. But the man's 
neighbor places a bone of a matured 
horse before me, alleging the same. In 
the presence of this bone the fact of the 
colt is realized, also, as strongly as if the 
colt were in ocular presence. The reli- 
ance is upon a witness which is powerless 
to mislead, and which I am powerless to 
doubt. The testimony of the most trust- 
worthy neighbor that he has seen the colt 
could not be as satisfying. On one of 



170 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

the exhumed Babylonian bricks was 
found the impression of a terrier's foot. 
There was from this as strong a realiza- 
tion of the existence of the terrier at the 
time of the construction of the brick as if 
all the intervening time had been drawn 
out and the very dog were being looked 
upon. In the State Library of Michigan 
I saw a gun-barrel overgrown by fifty an- 
nulations of wood. That a human indi- 
vidual existed in proximity with that tree 
fifty years ago is necessarily as real as if 
I were looking upon him. 

History, too, relates that an astronomer 
by the name of Thales lived six hundred 
years before our era, and that he noted an 
astronomical event. Astronomical com- 
putations, with respect to that event, and 
which were possible only after this histo- 
ry had been promulgated, determine it to 
have occurred upon the time history had 
stated. Natural facts, then, in this in- 
stance verify history in respect to its chro- 



THALES VERIFIED. 1J1 

nology. But the integrity here discover- 
ed could not have been less in other parts 
of the record. It would obtain as well in 
respect to the name of the man, and in 
what other matters are related of him in 
the same connection. Then, that an 
astronomer lived in Greece at the begin- 
ning of the twenty-five centuries next 
preceding us, and that his name was 
Thales, is substantially a fact of science. 
It were scarcely possible to see the setting 
Pleiades in that far-back age and not also 
see Thales there present and looking 
upon it. To the duly thoughtful the one 
fact is as real as the other. 

The discoveries of Professors Smith, 
Lenormant, Sayce, and other eminent 
Assyriologists in the valleys of the 
Euphrates and the Tigris, reveal a litera- 
ture upon clay tablets, created and placed 
mainly in the sixth century before our 
era. Some of it was, however, even then 
extremely ancient. It was soon after 



172 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

concealed under the ruins of the cities 
containing it ; and later those ruins were 
themselves covered over by the debris of 
time, and their locations were matters of 
doubt for nearly twenty centuries. And 
not until the middle of the present cen- 
tury, and in the present generation, was 
the ground over them broken, the literary 
treasures found, and brought to the light 
and disciphered. Only by impossible plot- 
tings could those bricks and their inhu- 
mations be a modern device or less an- 
cient than the extreme dates when those 
cities were overthrown. 

Then, to look upon those fossil tablets 
is to look upon the people of twenty-five 
centuries ago, who constructed and in- 
scribed them, and without passing them 
through that vast interlying time, placed 
them directly from their own hands into 
ours. But those records are in striking 
accord with the Old Testament records, 
which makes the existence of those 



HISTORIC SCIENCE. 1 73 

records at that time quite as necessary ; 
and the same rays of mental vision which 
disclose the brick writers and librarians 
and the subjects of their sketches, fall 
largely, also, upon the chroniclers of the 
Bible and the characters whom they re- 
port. These far-in-the-past Chaldeans 
and Jews are, then, made facts of the 
present day, and stand before us the 
revelations of science, as unquestionable 
to mental view as by the same vision 
stands before us the mastodon in life, to 
whose bones he is a necessity, and which 
by the same processes of discovery are 
reclaimed from the bog. And hence, too, 
a branch of the science, the history of the 
human race, is indisputably a branch of 
natural history, resting on purely natural 
facts. 

But fossil geology has achieved yet 
more in this direction. Not only have 
we a fossil literature in bricks; one is 
before us on papyri exhumed from the 



174 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

labyrinthian charnal vaults in the valley 
of the Nile, and is more ancient than that 
of Chaldea. In this instance we have 
not only the literature but the literati, 
the priests themselves and the subjects 
in person, related of in the literature, in 
fossil before us, even to the drapery vest- 
ing them, and placed upon them by their 
surviving cotemporaries. 

The recent achievements by the emi- 
nent Egyptologists, Kuril Brugsch Bey 
and Prof. Maspero, in their discovery and 
identification as such, of "the mummies 
of the majority of the rulers of Egypt 
during the eighteenth, nineteenth, twen- 
tieth and twenty-first dynasties," and 
their placement in the Bulaq museum at 
Cairo, tends in thoughtful minds to ex- 
cite a strong realization of the fact that 
we may look upon the very faces upon 
which the eyes of Moses gazed, and upon 
the very hands which raised him out of 
the ark in the Nile. The body of Rameses 



TIME ELIMINATED. . 1 75 

II., "The Pharaoh of the Oppression," 
the "new king over Egypt," and that of 
his daughter, "The Daughter of Pha- 
raoh," are in the museum at Cairo; un- 
less there is here a mistake, hardly pos- 
sible to occur with every essential means 
of certainty at full command, and when 
these fossils were answering to their own 
names by revealing them on their inner 
vestments, as the waxed cerements over 
them were, since left by the embalmer's 
hand, for the first time broken at the re- 
cent exhibition at Bulaq. 

Here, then, by this it matters nothing, 
so far as relates to the particulars of these 
discoveries, as to suspicious circum- 
stances, real or fancied, that may be 
pointed to as attending the course of in- 
tervening history to render it doubtful or 
incredible. What libraries were made, 
and by whom; what destroyed, and by 
whom; what motives may be cited for 
writing history of this import or that, are 



176 . PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

of little consequence here, since all this 
intervening broad expanse of ages is 
wholly unused by this route. That deep 
past and the present are in immediate 
proximity. That a people existed on the 
Nile at a greatly ancient date; that the 
state and facts related of them on the re- 
covered papyri and evinced, incidentally, 
on the persons of the mummies, did then 
exist, are matters of natural fact. 

But here, with these fossils, Hebrew 
records hold relationship. They refer to 
sovereigns of the character of the most 
celebrated ones here discovered, as having 
been in power in the days of Moses ; and 
Isaiah denominated Rameses an Assyr- 
ian, which the fossils sustain, but which 
before was a biblical difficulty. 

As to bearing on the reliableness of 
general history conducted literarily from 
age to age to the present, where events 
and dates are referred to by both, history 
is commonly in essentials corroborated by 



HISTORIC SCIENCE. 1 77 

the fossils, and is thus, the part of it that 
is prosaic narrative, constituted an 
authority hardly less than established sci- 
ence. Over Egypt, from one end of the 
land to the other, Rameses II. was sculp- 
tured in all forms and sizes. Each piece 
is a likeness of the others. This led to 
the supposition that they, too, faithfully 
represented the great monarch. When 
uncovered in Bulaq, it was seen that these 
were very pure likenesses made of that 
distinguished sovereign; and from it fol- 
lows, necessarily, that in the literary part 
of their historic work the same scrupu- 
lous care to be literal was present as well. 
But from the nature of their several relig- 
ions, this would be more true of Egyp- 
tians than of Chaldeans, and of Hebrews 
than of Egyptians. Egyptian deities 
were more discriminative in matters of 
rectitude than were those of the Chalde- 
ans ; and the Deity of the Hebrews was 
regarded to be supremely exacting of in- 



178 PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 

tegrity. The entire absence of favoritism 
from biblical biography is a fact in which 
may be seen the scrupulous integrity of 
the ancient Hebrew writers, with whom 
this principle must have passed no more 
into biographical than into narratives of 
other character. 

Then, though the ancient Hebrew 
literature, so far as known, has not passed 
into fossil save as joined with that of 
Chaldea and Egypt, it still, by the traces 
named, is properly also classified as fossil, 
upon the principle that the animal is 
fossil of which but a partial skeleton is 
recovered, and though that be in con- 
nection with skeletons of other animals. 
That is to say, the animal by this pres- 
ence of a part of itself is seen to have 
been a cotemporary existence with those 
more preserved. That part, too, of the 
record being in practical sameness with 
the corresponding part of the entirety as 
now extant, is essentially conclusive 



THE BIBLE IN VERITY. 1 79 

proof that if what then existed could 
have met with the same fossilizing con- 
ditions, then the fossil before us would be 
of a corresponding sameness with the 
Old Testament Hebrew record now in 
use. With this view, considering also the 
integrity of those writers, the examples of 
prescience and prediction supplied by it are 
impressed as verities of that far-back age ; 
that, in harmony with the provisions of 
the laws of prescience and inspiration, 
the phenomena of this character there 
recorded were supplied for human direc- 
tion in the attainment of the ends har- 
monizing with the highest wisdom and a 
most sensitive affection for man. The 
prose may not in all places be separable 
from the poetry, nor may there be wisdom 
enough to always separate the pure 
original from the necessary accretions of 
the impinging ages; but with these ex- 
ceptions, of small weight now, the 
thoughtful one may well realize that upon 



l8o PROPHECY AND PRQPHETS. 

those canonical pages are spread in essen- 
tial fullness and accuracy the admoni- 
tions, counsels, instructions and en- 
couragements once formulated and de- 
livered to man by a wisdom much above 
his own, and by an interest in him far 
greater than that possessed for him by 
his fellows. 

ONTOLOGICAL OUTLOOK. 

In the light of this discussion, which 
is now practically closed, the body of 
finite universal existence is seen proceed- 
ing not wholly alone in its own forces, at 
its own option, from its own inherent 
tendencies, however derived, but, as well, 
under a supervision which when needed 
institutes by special volitional forces 
means for special and thence for general 
ends. While this leaves to nature in all 
its -departments the eternally unchanged 
nature of its laws, it finds it natural to 
nature to receive this supervision in its 



A GUARDIANSHIP OVER NATURE. l8l 

interest. The better lily waits the 
arrival of co-operative intelligence to 
render its environment more helpful, and 
without it the best could never be. So, 
too, the better example of human being 
remains unexisting where what special 
aids available by intelligence in superior 
lives are not bestowed. The view, then, 
reveals a universe of being not only 
under the reign of immutable law, but 
under an all-wise, equally powerful and 
humanly interested manipulator of those 
laws; which constitutes a government 
over finite being throughout, and always 
beneficently to the order where it is em- 
ployed, securing for it advanced condi- 
tions more expeditiously than would 
occur by spontaneity, and to thus pos- 
sibly achieve for it what spontaneity 
would finally be unable to accomplish. 

We are too near the end to indulge in 
further detail, which would be a pleasing 
task, and it needs scarcely to be added 



PROPHECY AND PROPHETS. 1 82 

that this government extends over the 
human order of being as well, and with 
greater need than elsewhere ; it being in 
its own essence more remotely related with 
the physical order, and less capable of 
spontaneity in reaching its ends. 

The principle provides only that such 
government exists. When employed, and 
to what extent, is a matter, in the general 
course of events, much more difficult. 
Bmt the intelligent gardener, who is en- 
dowed with strong tastes of fitness, and 
good intelligence as to his interest, leaves 
less to spontaneity. While he will not 
cultivate so highly as to destroy the hard- 
iness of the plant, and so, in generations, 
the plant itself, he labors to promote it by 
every real advantage. This would, then, 
lead us to reflect that the special hand of 
the Deity may be far more intimate in 
the affairs about us and of us than com- 
mon judgment would suspect; and that at 
no time are human necessities, as seen by 



THE DIVINE PRESENCE. 183 

perfect wisdom, unattended by befitting 
dispensations from the Deity whose face 
is no less immediately and constantly 
before man than is the face of nature 
itself. 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

A B KAHAM foresees the Messiah 154 

Agabus predicts a famine 162 

Aper, Arrius 131 

Aquinas 16 

Aristotle 19,162 

Astronomy, the Copernican better than the Ptolemian 32 

"DACON 19 

" Novum Organumof 18 

related with modern philosophy 17 

Roger. 19 

Bailey, Francis 96 

BrughschBey 174 

Bulaq, museum of 175-177 

pZESAR, his presentiments of his death 125-127 

Calphurnia has presentiments of Caesar's death 126 

Carpenter, Dr. Wm. B 96 

Catherine, St 13 4 

Claudius, famine in the days of 175-177 

Colburn, Zerah 94-96 

•• " contrasted with young Joseph, Samuel and 

David 77,78 

Columbus, his impression concerning his mission 124 

Creasy, Prof., his reflections on Joan of Arc 137 

TYEITY, the, continues upon his work. 33 

" " personality of 73 

Descartes 17-19 

Devil, the dream concerning 119 

(185) 



1 86 INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Disraeli 15 

Diocletian 30-32 

Druidess, a, predicts Diocletian's accession to the throne 131 

WGLISH girl, case of an 110, 111 

Environment, what constitutes it 87 

Epilepsy, its relation with prophecy 88, 89 

"PACTS matters of Debate 24 

Fossil Geology - 173 

Fossil Literature 171, 172 

Francisci, case of 116 

Future, the, howknowable 63-65 

" " is an existence 60 

rtLADSTONE t 15 

Guizot 131 

TTISTOEY, a science, when 168-173 

defined 166 

how limited 166-168 

Hume, his comments on Joan of Arc 138,139 

TMPRESSION, the same occurring simultaneously to two 

minds , 114 

Impressions, predictive, in waking and in sleep J20, 121 

Induction, a medium of mental vision 53-55 

Induction the best means of certitude 70 

Isaiah predicts the Messiah 156-160 

JEREMIAH 156,157 

Joan of Arc, contrasted with Old Testament Prophets, 144, 145 

" predictive utterances of 142,142 

" reads the unuttered prayer from the Dauphin's 

mind 143 

Josephine preseiencing her destiny 125 

Journey, a, disturbed by forebodings of evil IIS 



INDEX. " 187 



PAGE. 

IT ANT, his theories of Knowledge 46 

Kapunda, the, sails for Australia, and Is the subject 

of a prophecy 110, 111 

Knowledge, conditions of. 51 

TAPLACE 19 



jj^ARGARET, ST 134 

Maspero, Prof 1 74 

Maudsley, Prof 88,89 

Messiah, predictions of the 153-160 

Mind is not required in large measure for the use of the prophetic 

gift 84 

Mind, its great versatilities 86 

" reading of 82 

Moses predicts the Messiah 155 

l^APOLEON 125 

Natural Science, age of 20 

Newton 19 

ALD TESTAMENT, the, substantially a fossil 179 

Ontological Outlook 180 

pAPYRI, fossil 173 

Pinkerton, Dr James 115 

Plato 160 

Prescience, principles in nature providing for it 60,65 

Progress in the seemingly stationary past 14 

Prophecy, a legitimate subject for philosophy 48 

" a matter of education and training 92,93 

" a normal phenomenon 88, 89 

" denned 59 

" fulfillments only in substance, examples 115,116 

" its conditions intricate 109 

" not always predictive 147-150 



1 88 INDEX. 

PAGE. 

Prophecy, of contingent fulfillment 112-115 

" reasons for its rare occurrence in profane history 106-108 

" the communications merely of the ends and 

not the modes of mental achievement 75-77 

Prophecy, pure, and its conditions 60 

Prophets, characteristics of 163-165 

T> AMESES II. recovered, etc 175-177 

Reasoning element, the, advent of its power 16 

Religion and Science, mutual helps of 40-42 

" not believed by the thoughtful to be in peril from 

science : 32 

" promoted by science 32-39 

Required change of means over human conduct 12 

QCIENCE, its conditions 49 

Scotus 16 

Shunamite, the, her son restored to life 92 

Simeon presciences Christ, etc 161 

Spencer, Herbert, his incomplete data 25-39 

Statistics, age of 26 

TABLETS, Babylonian clay 171 

Thales 171 

Thought, means of perceiving it in adjacent minds 79-82 



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